I come bearing 25 Rogue/Gambit ficlets.
TWENTY. FIVE.
051. Reading Material
“Just out o’ curiosity,” Rogue asks from her deck chair, holding her oversized sunglasses up off of her eyes, “Why’re you hidin’ my romance novel behind th’ newspaper?”
Remy’s caught deader than a catfish on a hook, so he figures he might as well quit trying to hide it, and tosses the paper down to the grass. The book in question is indeed one of the heaving-breasts-and-burning-loins variety, complete with pink binding and a big, bare-chested Highlander in a kilt cradling a little slip of a redhead gracing the cover. If the cover was a little less trashy, he wouldn’t be feeling quite as emasculated as he does getting caught reading his girlfriend’s guilty pleasure books. “What tipped you off?”
“Well, you’ve been havin’ a hard time holdin’ that newspaper open, for one. ‘S about eight times the size of that book.” Rogue looks at him, eyebrows high, for a moment before grinning and setting her sunglasses back on her nose. “And it was missing from my desk this mornin’.”
“Don’t mean you couldn’ have lost de t’ing you’self,’ he grumbles, and reluctantly dog-ears the page he’s on.
“Ah wasn’t finished with that one yet.” Rogue takes a sip of her iced tea and lets the ice cubes linger on her lips. “An’ Ah always keep the one Ah’m reading in the same place. So, why’d you steal mah book, exactly, lover?”
“Would you believe it’s t’ study why you women insist on readin’ t’ings dat sound like de author don’t know how sex works?” Remy gestures at her with the book in chastisement.
“Not fer a second.”
“Why do you read dis crap, anyway?” he asks. “Makes a man wonder what dese imaginary Fabio-types got dat he don’t.”
“Oh hush up, sugar, y’all know no book can ever compare t’ your sweet Southern lovin’.” She lifts her sunglasses again and winks at him. “Simple. I like t’ laugh at the really bad ones. An’ the really good ones give me ideas.”
“Oh?” He leans over in his chair, raising his eyebrows. “What sort o’ ideas?”
Rogue puts on her best saucy minx face and glances coyly at him through her eyelashes. “Ah can show you later, if y’all feel up to it. An’ don’t tell me how that book ends.”
052. Safe
He rubs his fingers through Rogue’s mess of sleepy curls in slow, even strokes, murmuring close to her ear to chase away the dreams. She whimpers into the pillow clutched to her face, jaw tight and eyes screwed shut against whatever monsters scream and tear their ragged way through her head, and Remy has to stop himself from shaking her awake.
It’s terrifying, holding your lover at night, and never knowing who might wake up in your arms.
“Shhh, sweet girl,” he murmurs, sitting up and drawing her sleeping body into his arms, blankets and all. “It’s okay. Nothin’s gonna touch you while dis one’s right here. You’ safe, wit’ me.”
Rogue struggles against him and her eyes flash open and for just an instant she claws at his body, scared and thrashing at him hard enough to bruise and snarling with malice he knows doesn’t belong to her clouding those terrified eyes-and then it’s over as soon as it began. She slumps forward, burying her face in his chest and twisting her hands in his shirt as if she’d crawl under his skin if she could, as if he’s the only real thing left in the world. His hands splay over her back and cradle the back of her neck, anything to ease her the rest of the way out of her nightmares.
“God, Remy,” she gasps. Her breath sounds tight and labored. “Ah’m so sorry-”
“Not you’ fault,” he says into her hair. “Dat wasn’ you, wakin’ up.”
“But Ah cain’t keep doin’ this t’ you. Ah won’t hurt you if y’ let me come out of it on my own-”
“You didn’ do anythin’ wrong. An’ you’ crazy if you t’ink I would let you sleep through dat.” He leaves kisses at her temples, tilting her chin up to meet his eyes. “Who’s dream was it?”
“Ah couldn’t tell. Felt like I was hanging from my wrists-like the only part of me that could reach th’ floor were my toes. Everythin’ hurt.” Rogue shudders, swallowing hard, and he soothes her with gentle fingers in her hair. “An’ then Ah felt you touching me, an’ tryin’ t’ keep me from hitting you and…that’s not what it felt like, t’ whoever’s memories I was dreamin’ through.”
“Christe, girl…” Remy exhales long and slow. “You know how too many t’ings feel, fo’ never havin’ felt them you’self.”
053. Kisses
“Can Ah ask you a weird, mildly invasive, and most likely very stupid question?” Rogue asks, curled up and held close in his lap, hands planted on his shoulders because there’s nowhere else for her to put them.
“Dat depends,” Remy says, taking the edge of the silk scarf in her fist and tugging the edge out farther across his mouth. He kisses her lips lazily through the sheer fabric. “It ain’ gonna put dis one off kissin’ you, is it?”
He slides his mouth slowly across hers again, biting her bottom lip gently, then licking the spot through the scarf to soothe it away. The feeling goes straight to her head; for someone who’s spent so long believing that her first kiss would also be the last she’d ever receive, even kissing through fabric takes some getting used to.
“Well, christ, Rem, Ah hope not!” The words come out breathy and fast, and she modifies the previous sentiment in her head; kissing someone as talented and well-practiced at it as Remy LeBeau is going to take a lot of getting used to.
“Den go ‘head.”
“D’you think it’s…” She wants to lay her head on his shoulder, but instead keeps her eyes traveling over his face, gaze lingering at his mouth and eyes. “Is it awful for you, havin’ t’ kiss me like this?”
He chuckles low in his throat and it feels so nice against her body pulled up flush to his. “Does it feel like dis one minds, t’ you?” he says, leaving little kisses on her lips between the words. Rogue leans into him.
“Yeah, but-” She has to pause every so often until he releases her mouth for breath. “-when Ah know y’all can have any normal girl y’ want-”
“Lies.”
“Don’t-sass me, Remy-” Her train of thought comes closer and closer to running off the rails with every kiss and she knows she’s blushing like a nun in a strip club from the sensation coursing through her veins; it’s alternately maddening and wonderful. “-y’all know women fall-all over themselves fer you-t’ notice them.”
“Not dat,” he says, and when he claims her mouth again she’s extremely glad he’s holding her, or she’d have never managed to stay on her feet. “I know you know dis one’ll never want anyone but you. You’ve ruined me fo’ everyone else out dere.” His arms tighten briefly around her, holding her against the rumble of laughter in his chest. “B’sides, ain’t no one who kisses like you do.”
054. In Control
“You afraid?”
Remy’s voice is gentle, and he’s perfectly still, poised above her, content to wait until she’s comfortable and certain and it pulls at her heart so strongly Rogue thinks she might choke on it. She has absolutely nothing to be afraid of, not now-with any luck, not for a long time. She should feel something stronger than hesitance-something like triumph or relief, anything but fear. She’s lost enough of her life to fear.
“A little.” Her hands rest lightly on his shoulders, just enough to convince herself she’s still in charge of her power. The hard part is, she feels no different working to hold it back than she’d felt before. She won’t know if she’s lost the reins until something goes wrong, and that’s what scares her.
“Dis one won’t touch unless you’ confident in you’ control, Rogue.” He runs his palm down her arm, stopping just above the cuff of her sleeve. “S’gonna take some gettin’ used to, not worryin’ ‘bout hurtin’ other people anymore. It won’t kill me t’ wait a little longer, ‘til you’ sure o’ you’ command over you’self.”
“Ah don’t know why it’s still shakin’ me up so much.” She pushes a nervous hand through her hair. “The professor even said the pull o’ my power will only be there when Ah need it t’ be-”
“I know what de professor said, chere.” Red eyes catch and hold hers. No judgment. No disappointment. No expectations. “All dat matters is what you feel you’ capable of.”
Rogue bites her lip. He can see the apprehension still swimming beneath green irises, but she pulls his head down and coaxes his lips apart with hers and it’s sweet and fervent and so different but still so achingly normal a feeling that it makes his teeth hurt. Shining, overfull eyes meet his when she lets him go. Remy’s gaze lingers on those wine-dark, well-kissed lips, turned up just a little at the corners, and leans a little more of his weight against her as she slides bare hands up under his shirt. The pads of her fingers tease gingerly, then press and stroke and slide far up his back.
“If you c’n trust me…Ah c’n trust me,” she says.
“Girl, ‘m about t’ ‘trust you’ all over,” Remy growls into her mouth, sliding his hands beneath the hem of her shirt, and when he kisses her again she feels the smile on his lips.
055. Empathy
Rogue goes through phases of wanting to dip through his head and gather up Remy’s thoughts in her fist, to store them for rifling through at her leisure. She’ll glance at him and see those red eyes glazed and lost in thought, and often wonder what sends him so far away. Sometimes she’s loath to snap him out of it, when she can tell he’s just bored and she can admire him without being teased for it.
This is not one of those times.
Kitty had warned her that Remy hasn’t been himself, in hopes that Rogue might be the one to shake him free of his own head, and she’s nervous to see that his status hasn’t changed much from Kitty’s description. Remy leans heavily on his elbows on the table, hands fisted in his hair, and seems to radiate an aura around him so dark she can practically feel the charge in the air.
There is a charge in the air the closer she approaches. It makes the hair on her arms and the back of her neck stand up.
“Ah won’t ask what’s wrong,” she murmurs from behind him. “But Ah will ask if you’d mind the company.” He says nothing. Rogue slides into the chair beside him. “Alright, fine. Ah’ll sit here with you anyway.” Her voice is soft, hands in her lap, very careful not to invade his space unless he wants her there. “But sugar, Ah won’t touch unless you say it’s okay.”
“Don’t,” he rasps.
They sit there in silence for what feels like a lifetime. The muscles in his arms and back stand out in sharp relief, and she wants more than anything to smooth her hands over him and soothe the aches away. It hurts her to watch him hurting. It hurts to even breathe.
The longer Remy remains motionless, the higher the worry climbs up her spine until she has to physically restrain herself from shivering from it. Her hands sit clenched, white-knuckled, on her knees.
Eventually, long after Rogue has lost track of the time, he reaches over and pries her fingers from her knees, taking her hands in his and gently rubbing the kinks out of her joints. He falls into a rhythm, and neither speaks nor meets her eyes.
“Thank you, love, for always protectin’ me like this,” she says, voice thick with emotion that doesn’t feel appropriate to force on him just now. “But, Rem, please, sweetheart, let me do the same for you. Let me take care of you.” Her fingers slide from his loose grip, and she cradles his face in her hands. His gaze is turned away. She doesn’t force him to look at her, but leans forward, and leaves the lightest of kisses against his forehead. “Ah’ll shoulder this with you, whatever it is. And Ah can carry a lot.”
Remy turns his face into her hand and kisses her palm through the glove, and she stands, threading her fingers through his. “Let it rest, ‘til you’re ready, okay?” Her thumb rubs the back of his hand. “But come to bed, for now?”
056. Someday
“Come away wit’ me, someday.”
Rogue looks at him with what Remy can only call thinly veiled shock. She’s sprawled out on his chest in bed, and he’s smiling up at her and a rush of warmth floods through her veins; her shudder against him feels heavenly, and her cheeks color prettily and Remy wants to laugh and kiss her and roll her over beneath him all at once. He settles on throwing his weight to the side and pressing her back into the mattress, growling and nuzzling at the curve of her shoulder ‘til she squirms and flails and begs to stop the tickling.
“What on earth’s gotten into you, Remy LeBeau?” she giggles, and her arms snake around his neck when he stops to let her catch her breath.
“We’ll have everyt’ing we need,” he says, leaning down to kiss her collarbone. “De stars an’ de moon an’ de open highway, wit’ whatever we can fit on dis one’s bike. We’ll go wherever y’ want.”
He’s beautiful when he’s happy. She can see this imagined life playing out behind those stunning red eyes.
“We’ll have chowder in New England, an’ den take off fo’ de pizza an’ a baseball game in Chicago, o’ we c’n drive across de deserts in Arizona an’ New Mexico an’ try not t’ die o’ thirst along de way.”
“Dying of thirst,” Rogue laughs, finger combing his hair back out of his face, “How romantic!”
“You can teach dis one t’ ski up in de mountains. I’ll even let you laugh when dis one falls on de bunny hills.” He kisses behind her ear, and she can feel the warmth of his lips shielded by her hair. “O’ dis one’ll take you down t’ New Orleans. Show you his old life. De sights an’ sounds an’ tastes o’ dat beautiful place.”
His voice softens, and Remy’s mouth wanders over her as if she’s some fragile, precious thing to be swathed up in softness and guarded. He’s reverent and attentive to the little sounds she makes each time he touches her, and when he meets her eyes again his own are warm and far away. “You’d love my city, chere. It’s jus’…alive, like nowhere else in de world. It shifts under you’ eyes, while you’ watchin’. But somehow…it don’ really change. ‘S always de same place dis one remembers.”
“Home never does, does it?” Rogue murmurs. “Ah’d love t’ see your world through your eyes, Remy. She pulls his body down to rest against her, wrapped up in her arms. “Someday, sweetness. We’ll run away together, an’ live that life. Ah want my life all tangled up with yours.”
057. Memorize
Soft, flickering light filters through the sheets she’d run above them, gilding Remy’s olive skin in gold. The candles are far enough away not to be jostled, she’d made sure of that-the last thing she needs is something else to concentrate on not ruining when it takes enough effort just to work on keeping her power guarded back, and she can’t even tell when that’s working.
It’s a hard thing to do when every sensation is heightened like never before. And even harder when you’ve built a blanket fort for the occasion.
Hours ago, Rogue had grabbed his hands and pulled him up the stairs after her, laughing and dodging questions all the way, and the stunned silence when she’d opened his bedroom door had been worth every single second she’d ever spent training to hold her powers back like this. And then worth it all over again as soon as he’d heard her dress fall to the floor.
She’d stopped the mad dash Remy’s hands had made for his belt, stilling his fingers, and worked at the fastenings herself, slow and deliberate until he’d pulled his shirt one-handed over his head. Just her fingertips had run across his bare chest before she’d pulled him after her into her blanket badger den.
And then…she’d just held him. Drinking him in with her hands, curled up in the piles of pillows she’d stuffed in here from both of their rooms, re-learning every familiar line and shape of him all over again. As if it were all new.
Rogue takes the most time, now, exploring the planes of his face. First with her fingertips, then with gentle, chaste kisses in their place, she memorizes his features with her skin. He’s closed his eyes, and she watches the candlelight arc across his eyelids, his mouth. It catches on the stubble on his jawline and she runs her palm across it, marveling and reveling in the faint scratch against her skin. He’s handsome and perfect and patient with her and the enormity of what he’s just trusted her with wells in her throat so high and thick there’s no space left for tears.
Remy feels her fall still, and when she leans her forehead against his he murmurs low against her lips, as if to keep it from the air. “Ain’ never loved someone as much as you, chere.”
058. Movie Night
“Rahne, honey,” Rogue says, wedging herself further underneath Remy’s arm and peeking between her fingers at the screen, “You’re sure this is the movie y’all meant to watch?”
“Yep!” The seven-year-old beams, plunking herself back into the vacated spot between Remy’s feet and shoving a handful of fresh popcorn into her mouth. “Watch this! The alien baby’s about to rip through his chest!”
“Thanks fer th’ warnin’, pup,” Rogue groans, hands tight over her eyes when the screeching and death gurgles emanating from the TV herald the alien’s gruesome arrival, and Remy laughs far harder than is warranted at her squeamishness.
“All o’ de t’ings you’ seen wit’ de X-Men, chere, an’ you’ afraid o’ Alien? Alien?! Out o’ de t’ousands o’ movies in de world, dis is de t’ing dat scare you de most-?”
“Oh, leave me alone, Remy,” she flushes, “Y’all knew Ah wanted t’ watch Star Wars!”
“If you say so, chere,” Remy obliges, innocent as an angel, and moves to lift his arm from around her shoulders.
Rogue dives for his arm and hugs it with both of hers before he can get away. “Dammit, you know what Ah meant!”
“You said t’ leave y’ alone,” he says, raising his eyebrows and doing a bang-up job of holding back the laughter welling in his chest, “If you’ gon’ skewer dis one fo’ jus’ bein’ attentive, ‘m gon’ go sit on de floor wit’ de pup an’ leave you t’ suffer on de couch all by you’self-”
“Shhhhh!” Rahne turns around and glares at the both of them from the floor. “I can’t hear the movie!” Sufficiently appeased by their sudden silence, the tiny readhead turns back to the screen.
“Okay, fine. Ah’ll stick this one out with y’all,” Rogue whispers, “But Ah am not watchin’ Paranormal Activity with th’ two o’ you!”
059. As We Go Along
“Mind if dis one sits?”
Rogue motions a yes with a dip of her head, and Remy pulls up a spot beside her on the tile.
“Come here often?” He stares out across the sky. There’s nothing but a few sparse clouds to break the view out over Xavier’s property. The night is silent - and eerily pretty.
“Ah used to.” She brushes windblown hair back behind her ear. “Give you credit, though-y’all are the only one who’s ever come lookin’ for me up here.”
He smiles wanly. “Got a lot o’ experience wit’ rooftops, m’self.” Red eyes cut sideways, studying her; Remy gathers the apprehension and loneliness from her posture, how she sits curled in on herself, knees drawn up to her chest. But when he reaches just a little, she feels…hollow. She radiates with it. “What brings you up t’ de roof dis late?”
“Good place t’ think. ‘S quiet.” He watches a shiver arc down Rogue’s spine. “The stars don’t look at you like y’ owe ‘em an explanation.”
“Chere, if dis one-”
She cuts him off. “No, Rem, Ah promise, ‘s nothin’ you did. Actually,” she sighs, “You’ve been more’n wonderful to me. Ah’ve had so much fun with you, the couple o’ times we’ve gone out t’gether.”
“What’s gnawin’ at y’ so fierce, den,” he asks, allowing himself to really look at her for the first time since he’d found her here. “If it’s okay o’ me t’ pry.”
“Ah’m not used t’ bein’ treated like that, Remy. It’s…hard t’ accept sweetness when y’ know y’ could kill someone if y’ let them come too close.” Rogue breathes in deep. “Since Ah was fifteen, at best Ah’ve been a pariah. At worst, Ah become a game t’ people. “
She shivers again, and Remy shrugs out of his jacket, draping it over her shoulders. She looks at him with hesitance coloring her gaze. “Game?” he asks.
“First t’ get nearest t’ the Untouchable Girl wins. Ah’m a challenge t’ be overcome. Ah stopped bein’ a person a long time ago.” Rogue draws his coat closer around her neck and buries her nose in the collar. “Ah expected you t’ be no better.”
He laughs. “Den why’d you agree t’ a date wit’ dis one in de firs’ place?”
Finally, he ekes a smile out of her. “T’ shut y’all up!” She faces him for the first time, at last; he hadn’t realized he’d been anxious for her to turn to him until she meets his eyes. “Ah’m glad Ah did.”
Remy scoots closer, and Rogue almost seems to withdraw further into his coat. “What’s so wrong about it, dat y’ had t’ come up here t’ mull it over?”
“Ah’ve never…Ah don’t know how t’ do this relationship thing,” she says. Her fingers tighten around the lapels of his coat. “Ah can’t be close t’ you. Ah can’t kiss you, or sleep next t’ you at night. An’ y’all are so sweet. Y’ should have someone who can reciprocate that affection, rather ‘n hold you at arms’ length forever.”
“Y’ can, chere. Dis one don’ ask fo’ much.” He draws her body underneath his arm, and he can tell she wants to curl in closer, but holds back. Remy tightens his grip on her briefly, and when he presses a kiss to her hair she stiffens just the slightest for an instant. “We find our own ways ‘round it, if closeness’s what you want. Figure t’ings out as we go along, oui?”
060. Penny For Your Thoughts
Remy can’t decide which feels nicer, the warm water or the warm girl leaning her back against his chest. The pool is a perfect eighty or so degrees and he’s sunk down in it almost to his chin-the ambient temperature at 12:30 AM is not nearly so forgiving, but unfortunately, keeping one’s air passages above the water is necessary for breathing, and so his cheeks will continue to suffer at fifteen degrees cooler than the rest of him. Well, one of his cheeks will. The other rests comfortably against Rogue’s hair. She’s snuggled up cozy as can be in the wetsuit she’d insisted would keep him safe, and up to her nose in the water. He studies her half-submerged, wavering reflection, and she’s pensive. Far more relaxed than she’s seemed to be in days. Even the ever-present crease between her eyebrows is gone.
“Penny fo’ you’ thoughts, chere?” he asks, working at keeping the chlorine out of his mouth.
She lifts her chin out of the water and silent laughter he can feel against his body vibrates through her. “Ain’t enough pennies in the whole U.S. Mint fer all th’ thoughts in my head.”
“Fine, penny fo’ jus’ de ones dat’re you’ own, den.”
“Gonna cost y’ at least fifty cents, there, tiger,” she says, and submerges again.
“Dat much?” Remy kisses the top of her head when she comes back up for air. “Might be able t’ swing it. Jus’ fo’ you, though.”
“Mmm.” Rogue settles back against his chest. “Ah’m thinkin’ about how different things would be, if we didn’t need t’ do this anymore.” She turns in his lap, elucidating further when his expression clouds. “If we didn’t run t’ save people who’d rather have us locked up or dead.” Her voice is even, contemplative, with none of the bitterness his would ring with if asking the same question.
He kisses her hair again, draping his arms around her shoulders. He wishes to the empty sky that someday they won’t have to anymore. “Depends. Would take a lot less effort jus’ t’ stay alive, dat’s sure enough.”
“What’d we even do with ourselves?” she asks, and lays her head against his shoulder. “Besides argue?”
“Don’t know,” Remy brushes her hair from her shoulder and nips at her through the fabric. “Get jobs. Pay bills. Have mo’ creative sex den we’ve been gettin’.”
Rogue smiles. “Or y’all would jus’ keep stealin’ from rich folk an’ Ah’d be busy tryin’ not t’ accidentally kill anyone. An’ makin’ sure y’all don’t get yerself killed.”
“Dis one notices you didn’ nay-say de creative sex part.” He grins into her shoulder.
She dips down and spits a mouthful of water at him. “Now why on Earth would Ah do that?”
“T’ torment dis one, fo’ sure.” He nods with authority, throwing the back of his hand to his forehead and throwing an overblown woe-is-me face in her general direction, and Rogue has to bite back giggles when the breeze raises shivers on his bare skin. “Add ‘tormentin’ poor, lovesick Cajuns’ t’ you’ list of t’ings you’d be doin’. M’ sure dat wouldn’ change much.”
061. Learn Something New
“You plannin’ on gettin’ up anytime soon?”
“Go ‘way, Ah’m dead.”
Remy walks over to where she’s sprawled, spread-eagled, on the danger Room floor. He looms over her, his dark head of hair standing out against the blank, powered-down walls. “Y’ look pretty ‘live, t’ me.”
“Ah’m definitely dead.” Rogue rolls her head to the side to better look at him, and feigns normal speech as hard as she can to keep the focus off of her flaming cheeks. “Cain’t even move. Clearly ex-animate.”
He rolls his eyes and stoops to drape her arm about his shoulders. “Some cheese would go well wit’ dat whine o’ yours, girl.” She happens to have just enough energy left to stick her tongue out at him, but not quite enough to support any of her own weight. “Um. Little help, chere?”
Very laboriously, she pushes herself into a sitting position, bolstering herself against his shoulder. “Do Ah have to?”
Remy works an arm beneath her knees. “‘Case you forgot, dis one’s adversaries jus’ got him kicked out o’ his home, ‘stead o’ bestowin’ dat superhuman strength you’ so adverse t’ usin’ at de moment.”
“If a building jus’ collapsed on you, y’all wouldn’t want t’ move, either,” she says, arms tight around his neck as he lifts her. She can’t remember being this bone-tired in a long, long time. Or embarrassed by her performance. “DR simulation or not.”
“Look at it dis way,” he says, trying his best to dispel the blush from her face and stopping at the door while Rogue sluggishly punches in the shutdown and lock keys. “You now know you’ capable o’ liftin’ whole stories o’ buildings off you’self. Handy. Y’ learn some’ting new every day.”
“Unshakable optimist, you are, LeBeau.”
“At you’ service, m’lady.”
“Oh really?” One eyebrow arches upward. “‘Cause milady here could use a massage right about now.”
He rolls dark gemstone eyes while she bats hers prettily at him. “Woman, ain’t it enough dat you’ gettin’ door-t’-door service? Now y’ need spa treatment t’ go wit’ it?”
From up in Remy’s arms, she’s so close to him and wants so badly to run her tongue around the shell of his ear… “Ah can tell y’ a few other things that could use some servicin’, now that y’all mention it-”
“Girl, you’ shameless.”
Rogue winks. “Been learnin’ from one helluva fresh Cajun who’s been stickin’ ‘round these parts lately. Maybe y’all know him?”
He nips at her forearm slung across his chest. “I t’ink we’ve met once o’ twice.”
062. Breathless
He smiles a wicked grin against her even though he knows she’s too wrapped-up to see, her hands clenched in the sheets and whimpering soft little sounds at the back of her throat like there’s nothing in this world left but the feel of him warm and wet between her legs. She trembles and he does his best to hold her still-better safe when all that’s between him and her body is a single filmy length of silk. She’s never done this before, and there’s no way he’s going to deny it to her by being careless.
He works her with his mouth until she’s a tangled mess, her insides knotted up and her bitten wine-red lips caught between her teeth. She’s close, flushed and beautiful and wound taut as a harpstring; he feels it in her every shallow breath, and draws out every gasp and sigh and moan until she’s damn near sobbing from sensation. And god, her hand runs gently through his hair and then he’s had it, no more soft sweet leisure-he’s hot and deft and slick and she can’t, she can’t, she can’t, no more, my love, please-
She spasms hard and before the feeling fully washes through her Remy gathers her up in his arms, easing her down and stroking her back until she finds her breath. Her hands fist in his shirt and he kisses her hair, holds her as if she’d unravel if he lets go. Rogue tucks herself close against his body until the shaking stops, and lets them both slide, breathless, into sleep.
063. City Boy
“We goin’ on a date an’ workin’ on you’ skittishness,” he’d said, and rolled Rogue out of bed and brought her coffee while she’d dressed and whined and protested. “Can’t be crowd-shy fo’ever, petite.”
It’s the truth, and she hates it. If not for Remy, she’d have been perfectly content to hole up with the X-Men forever, where she knows anyone she might hurt at least should have seen it coming. Cities are not places she enjoys very much, and New York is likely the worst of the worst. She’s thankful they’re going at odd hours on a Tuesday; thoughts of braving rush hour or throngs of weekend tourists aren’t terribly pleasant mental pictures.
Remy, on the other hand, is as at home in the crowds as a fish in the sea, and helps her weave through the crush of humanity with as much ease as anybody else. Somehow he just knows-even though she tries her best to hide it-the instant she starts feeling threatened. On the subway he holds to the bar above the seats and shields her with his body, leaning down to smile and talk while she keeps her limbs tucked in close as she can to herself. They exude such an aura of happily taken that Rogue even catches one or two city folk glance over with smiles on their lips-a feat in and of itself. New Yorkers don’t smile at strangers. Or anyone, for that matter.
Rogue relaxes once they make it to the Met. The wide galleries and sparse visitors give her a chance to uncoil the knot of apprehension in her stomach, and finally concentrate on this ‘date’ he’d promised. And the golden opportunity for Remy-watching. She follows as he pulls her from one exhibit to the next, pointing out this artist or that one, and though she can’t come close to absorbing it all, he’s taken his sunglasses off, and that in itself is a beautiful thing.
He’s happy here.
Remy slinks up and holds her from behind when a horde of field-tripping sixth graders tromps around them. In the rowdy din of grade-schoolers, no one else hears when he whispers the Renoir the frazzled tour guide’s pointing out is a fake. He knows because his père has the original hanging up at home in New Orleans. And when he kisses her hair, Rogue murmurs that she hopes someday she’ll get to see it with him.
064. Fever
He grabs her wrist before she has the chance to swing her legs out of bed.
“Don’ go.”
The thin notes of pleading in his rough, sleep-hewn voice wrap her heart in their fists and squeeze until it’s painful. “Remy,” she says gently, tugging her hand from his grasp and smoothing it back over his sweat-dampened forehead and hair. “You’re burnin’ up. Ah’m jus’ gonna get y’all some water, alright?”
He slides his arms around Rogue’s waist, his cheek against her hip, and pulls her up close as he can. His fingers dig into her flesh. Like he’s afraid she’ll disappear if he lets go. It’s unsettling; she’s taken care of him like this before, but this time he’s been just far enough from himself to be…a little frightening. “Not yet,” he begs, and she fractures inside for him.
“Sweetheart,” Rogue murmurs, bending down to kiss the top of his head; the heat radiating from his skin burns through her shirt. She worries about him. She knows she probably doesn’t have to. But he’s sicker than the proverbial dog, and she’s going to hover, all kinds of nervous and protective, until he’s back to normal. “You need t’ take somethin’ t’ bring down the fever aches, an’ t’ keep you from dehydratin’. Ah promise, Ah’ll be right back next t’ you in a minute. Less than that.”
Remy gives her one last squeeze and lets his palm slide along her back until she’s too far for him to reach anymore. He listens to the fall and rise of her feet padding down the hall and back, and when she sits back on the edge of the bed he wants to yank her back beneath the covers and be held for the rest of the afternoon. But he raises his head and swallows when she hands him the water and painkiller, and waits to re-attach himself to her side until she slips herself back between the sheets.
“Go back t’ sleep, love,” Rogue whispers, pressing a kiss between his shoulder blades. She pulls the blankets back up over his back; his fever-hot skin scorches through his shirt and hers, and she has to resist the worry-wrought urge to take his temperature again. A wave of shivers arcs down his spine and she wraps her body as best she can around his, murmuring soft reassurance just shy of his ear.
Slowly, the chills subside.
065. Love Hurts
Rogue collides with his back and knocks the wind completely out of him, her nose buried right smack between his shoulder blades, in that spot that’s always itchy but he can’t quite reach to scratch for himself.
“…Ow.”
“Love hurts sometimes, sugar.” Even muffled by his own body, Remy can still hear the smile in her voice. “You smell so good.”
He sucks breath back into burning lungs, unsure whether to feel pleased or annoyed. “Good t’ know…?” he croaks.
She nuzzles him through his shirt, and he wants to be annoyed with her. He really does. But there’s something so inherently lovable about being held from behind and praised for something so little and silly that he cannot for the life of him stay irritated. And he might hate her just the tiniest bit for it.
“M’ sorry fer that,” she says, absently stroking his stomach. “S’ hard sometimes t’ realize how hard Ah can hit.”
“Lies an’ heresy.”
“It’s the honest truth, Mr. LeBeau.”
“You’ nose is growin’. Dis one can feel it pokin’ into his-”
“Aw, cut it out, lover, Ah said Ah was sorry.” Rogue rubs her cheek against his shirt for good measure. Her arms, though, don’t loosen up even a shred.
“Fine,” he groans, “Apology accepted. Now, you plannin’ on givin’ dis one back his spine anytime soon…?”
She bites him. Just hard enough to be irksome in that unreachable spot. And Remy would be willing to bet good money she’s grinning like the Cheshire cat. “Not done sniffin’ yer gorgeous man-smell yet, so…nope.”
066. Fleeting Feeling
It’s endless; the ever-changing, moment-by-moment drip of her emotions across his mind whenever she gets close is a thousand tiny hair-thin syringes, each forcing a different iridescent drug into his system. Each wisp of a thought in her head carries with it something else, another wave of feeling worlds away from the last, and by the time Remy can twine it around his fingers and focus she’s off again feeling something else in a hundred different directions that feel to him like a hundred different hooks beneath his skin all tugging him to follow to a hundred different places. There’s never a moment’s peace, with her in the room.
She’s infuriating.
She’s fascinating.
She has no idea.
Rogue catches him staring and glares acid at him from above her cereal bowl. He throws her a roguish grin in return, laughing in his head at his own pun for the instant it takes the irritation she radiates to turn into something…else.
Her emotions curl around him like the smoke trailing from a just-extinguished candle. Threads of vexation and amusement and something that tastes like the metallic tang of lust crawl across his senses and he wants to grab onto their edges, to pull them in like kite strings, but the harder he tries the faster they slip through his fingers. She gets up to rinse her bowl out in the sink.
“Y’all done leerin’ at me yet, Cajun?”
He shakes his hair out of his eyes. Annoyance rolls off her in waves, but that thin haze of of amusement still sits beneath it all. “Give it a minute. Ain’t had de chance t’ take in dose pretty long legs o’ yours yet-”
She shoves past him on her way out.
067. Day Away
Remy tosses her the keys to his motorcycle and yells to start it up, and Rogue darts off with a squeak of excitement that he’s finally trusting her with his baby. Not to drive it, mind you-just turn it on-but still. It’s been months since he’d let her start even one of Scott’s old fixer-uppers.
He watches her run off to the garage with a smile and a shake of his head. Girl appreciates the little things in life, that’s for sure. He takes his time wandering out to meet her; might as well let her puzzle it out for a minute before showing up and embarrassing her before she’s even got the key in the ignition. So he stops to grab and scarf down a pop-tart on the way and sneak-attack-headlock-noogie Jubilee as she passes him in the hall. And dodge the shoe she takes off and chucks at him for it.
“What’s the bag for?” she calls after his retreating back, scampering to retrieve her sneaker.
“Food. Blanket. Towels. De usual outdoorsy stuff.”
Jubilee runs after him and bounces by his elbow on the way down the corridor, grinning that knowing, sly, eyeroll-inducing grin that always means suggestive musings are forming in that little head of hers. “You’re stealing Rogue away to go have hot, wild sex on some secret little beach all afternoon, aren’t you?” she sing-songs, sliding pink glasses down the bridge of her nose and waggling her eyebrows at him.
“Theoretically,” Remy pushes her glasses back up on her face and ruffles her hair, leaving her grinning smarmily after him in the hall. “If dat was de desired aim fo’ de day, dis one sho’ as all hell ain’t gonna be confirmin’ nor denyin’ it t’ you.”
“Wait, though,” she asks, trotting up behind him at the door. “So, how would that even work, exactly…?” Another raise of the eyebrows and she’s grinning like a madwoman again, rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet.
He can hear the purr of his motorcycle from here and tosses an exaggerated wink over his shoulder, striding off to make sure Rogue hasn’t set his baby on fire.
“Trade secret, petite. Y’ know how dat is.”
068. At Home
“Je t’aime.”
Her voice is muffled, arms draped around his shoulders and lips buried in his hair, and Remy turns his face into her neck.
“Je t’aime, aussi, petite.” He presses a kiss to her throat. “Like when y’ speak like dat.”
“Y’all took me t’ the French Quarter.” Rogue says. “Ah’m jus’ tryin’ t’ blend in.”
“Girl, have y’ looked at de people in dis park?” He laughs against her collarbone. “Pretty sure Remy’s de only one who ain’ a tourist here. You blend in more’n de natives.”
She nuzzles his hair and smiles, heart welling up into her mouth until she can’t contain it and it spills out into words that aren’t enough to hold it. “Ah’m glad for that.”
His lips turn up at the corners. “Fo’ what, sweet?”
Rogue traces circles into his shirt with her fingertips, and he lounges in her arms, awash in the warm glow of her contentment. It envelops him like sun on bare skin. “That y’ feel like you belong here again.”
He reaches up to cradle the back of her neck in his hand, fingers stroking through the soft hair at her nape. The breath he draws in is long and sweet and colored with more things than one man should ever have the right to feel. “Ain’ nothin’ like bein’ home.”
069. Southern Charm
She flounces down the stairs in a sundress and a cowboy hat and Remy has to clap his hand over his mouth to keep from laughing out loud.
“Nice giddyup-I mean, getup,” he laughs as Rogue skirts around him in the hall.
“Laugh all y’ want, Swamp Rat.” She twirls and waltzes backward down the corridor, facing him with a smirk turning up the corners of her mouth. “Y’all are just jealous Ah look better in one o’ these babies than you do.”
“Ain’ never heard o’ no Cajun cowboys, chere.”
“That don’t make no difference.” Remy could swear she’s exaggerating the sway of her hips beneath that skirt. “Yer datin’ a Southern girl. It’s inevitable that y’all wear one o’ these at some point in yer life.”
“Over dis one’s dead body.”
Her laughter rings through the kitchen as she goes about loading up the cooler with iced tea and lunch. “Careful what y’ wish for, lover, or Ah’ll have y’all buried in one.”
“Remind dis one again why he agreed to dis?” he groans. “Seems hokey even fo’ you, girl.”
“‘Cause y’ love me.”
“Yeah, we’ll see about dat when y’ start steppin’ all over Remy’s toes.”
“Hush up, sugar,” Rogue chides, standing on her toes to kiss behind his ear. “It’ll be fun. B’sides, you’ll have Piotr there t’ suffer with ya. He ain’t never been square dancin’ either.”
“Somehow dis one doubts de Man-o’-Steel would be too wounded if Kitty stomps on his feet.” He sidles up beside her and leans against the counter. “Dis one’s flesh-and-blood toes couldn’ take it.”
“Oh, come on, Rem,” she wheedles, nudging him with her shoulder. “Please be a good sport about this?”
“Since y’ asked so nicely…” he sighs heavily, and he knows he’s going to regret this in about twelve seconds, but he steals her hat and tugs her body up close, adopting his best Southern accent low and sultry in his throat. “But Ah’ve a powerful urge t’ kiss you, Miss Anna, an’ y’all will have t’ bribe me for mah cooperation with some sweetness.”
“Well, then, Mr. LeBeau,” she smiles, her lips hovering just shy of his. “Ah’m pretty sure that can be arranged.”
070. Milkshakes
“Vanilla.”
“Nope. Strawberry.”
“Oh no, you’ crazy. Vanilla’s where it’s at.”
“Not as crazy as y’all. There’s so much more flavor in strawberry ice cream-”
“Non, petit, but dis one’ll let you delude you’self to you’ heart’s content.”
“Ah’m tellin’ you, Cajun, strawberry-”
“-Will never compare t’ vanilla in de milkshake world, Miss River Rat. De sooner y’ accept dat fact, den de sooner-”
“What fact, Bayou Boy? All Ah’m hearin’ is a fat load o’ crap from an untrustworthy s-!”
Rogue squeals and takes a handful of water to the face as he flings it from the sink, and by the time she wipes the dish suds from her face Remy is braced against the counter, his shoulders shaking with silent laughter.
“Ohhh, that is it, Remy Lebeau!” She dips her hand into the open container of chocolate ice cream, her white gloves be damned, and smears it all down the front of his white wifebeater.
He startles backwards from the shock of cold against his skin and glowers, red eyes wide and burning while her green ones spill over with mirth. “De hell, woman?!” he shouts, and peels off the shirt before the gobs of ice cream can slide from the fabric to the floor. She wolf-whistles long and low as he balls it up and chucks it onto the table.
“Truce?” Rogue grins, extending the hand not covered in ice cream. He eyes it for a moment before grabbing it and giving her one strong shake.
“Truce.”
“We decided on chocolate milkshakes t’ avoid that argument in th’ first place.” she says, and resumes scooping big dollops of ice cream into the blender. “Shame on y’all fer pickin’ fights.”
“An’ so you didn’ have t’ wash de blender twice, yeah,” Remy grouses, “but now you better be plannin’ t’ wash dis one’s laundry fo’ pullin’ dat chocolate stunt.”
“Not ‘til y’all run outta clothes,” she says, running a finger down the center line of his chest. “If y’all wait fer me t’ do it, you’ll be walkin’ around shirtless a lot more often.”
071. Gone
In all their time together, if the day ever came, he’d always expected to be the one to do the leaving. He’d never imagined how excruciating it would feel to be the one left.
Until one day she just…disappears. Gone from his bed, her room left a mess. A few things missing-some clothing, one of her stuffed bears. The Queen of Hearts he’d tucked behind her ear one day, summers ago, gone from the slats of the balcony door she’d kept it sticking out of. And he knows, now, the worst kind of pain one man can feel.
Most everything else she owns just lays all a-shambles where it was, frozen in time. As if she’d be back at the end of a day out, her things all where she’d strewn them in the days before, and pick her pajamas up off the floor when she yawns and crawls into bed beside him.
It’s impossible. Just the night before they’d walked out to the far edges of the Institute’s land. They’d watched the sun set together. She’d insisted he leave her there alone to think for a little while, as the last watercolor light was fading from the sky, and he had done. She’d called out after him as he’d begun the jog back to the mansion.
She’d said she’s loved him more than she’d ever known one person could feel, and he’d trotted back and kissed her hair and murmured his own love into her ear. Then he’d left her to her thoughts just as she’d asked. He’d fallen asleep before she’d made it back, though he could swear he’d felt her kiss his temple, felt her warm frame depress into the mattress next to him.
After three days he begs, and the professor relents. But she eludes even Cerebro’s reach. His anchor, the single thing that had tethered him to this place, gone up in smoke. Though the mad hope that she’ll make her way back keeps him hanging on, for months, by that last thread.
Eventually they ask him to pack her things away, to make room for new students to move in.
And then there’s nothing of her left here. And he is gone with her.
072. Sneaking Up
“Oh jeez, Rogue, knock it off already.”
“Knock what off?” Rogue asks, shaking herself out of the reverie she’d slipped into. Jubilee looks at her, eyebrows raised, with the most incredulous are-you-kidding-me expression she’d worn in…at least the last week.
“Um. You’ve been with him for over a year,” she hisses, sidling up next to Rogue on the bench and trying to be incognito enough to escape Remy’s notice. Rogue certainly wasn’t the only one admiring the Cajun’s delightfully chiseled shoulders as he chucks the basketball at the hoop over Bobby’s head. “It’s like you still haven’t passed the pining teenager phase, looking at him with those puppy dog eyes. Way too gooey for me.”
“No one’s forcin’ ya t’ monitor how I look at my man, Jubes.” Rogue laughs, and she can feel her ears color. “And Ah do not have puppy-dog eyes.”
“You’re right,” Jubilee amends, looking pointedly from Remy to Rogue and back again. “Those’re come-hither eyes you’re giving him, girl, don’t try an’ fool me.”
“They are not!” Rogue’s jaw drops and she shoves Jubilee with her shoulder. If she wasn’t turning red before, she’s certainly turning red now. “Ah’m not-Ah don’t-not in public!”
“It’s the look of lust, Rogue,” Jubilee says matter-of-factly, holding her tootsie pop between her teeth and grinning around it like the wicked little thing she aspires most to be. The redder Rogue turns, the wider the firecracker’s grin spreads. “Oh my god. You’re absolutely hot for him right now, aren’t you? You’ve been sitting here this whole time watching that body and those arms, and you’re absolutely turned the hell on, aren’t you?” She laughs gleefully. “This is hilarious!”
“Jubilation Lee, one more word out o’ you and Ah swear the gloves will come off and you’ll have more t’ worry about than th’ handprint Ah’m gonna leave on yer face-”
“C’mon, Rogue, what else does that hot hunk of Cajun do to get you all worked up-?”
“Dis one’s kinda interested in de answer t’ dat question, not gonna lie.”
Both girls jump eight feet in the air.
073. Maybe Yes, Maybe No
Knowing that he’s the only one who’s ever seen her like this intoxicates him.
Remy kisses the inside of her knee, lips lingering against her and licking at the raise of gooseflesh he feels through her hose. She’s smiling at him, face flushed with color and warm soft eyes locked with his, his shirt open and pooling behind her where she lounges propped up on her elbows on the bed, and it kills him-kills him-not to be able to smooth his hands over her perfect breasts. Her breath comes heavily, and that doesn’t make it even a shred easier to tear his attention from her skin.
“Ah take it y’all aren’t in such a rush t’ shower anymore?” Rogue asks, drawing her full bottom lip between her teeth as he nips at delicate flesh at the back of her knee and runs one hand up her thigh, the other holding her leg hiked over his shoulder.
“Not so much,” he says, pressing another kiss to the crease of her knee. “Mebbe we make it dat far, mebbe we don’t.”
“M’fine with that either way,” she sighs, and draws him closer with the pressure of her calf against his back.
074. Best We Can
He catches sight of her in the mirror long before she slinks her slightly ungainly body up behind his back. Rogue smooths her hands through his hair, breaking the intent stare he’d fixed his reflection with in her dresser mirror, closing his eyes and leaning into her attentive bare hands. She trails her fingers across his scalp and down to the back of his neck, pressing soft circles there until she feels his muscles melt against her.
“What’s got y’all so pensive, cher, if it’s knotted up yer neck like fisherman’s rope?” she asks him quietly, bending to kiss the top of his head.
Remy turns in the desk chair, draping his arms with slight difficulty around her seven-months swollen belly and kissing her body at the level of his mouth. “Speakin’ dis one’s native tongue? You mus’ be concerned fo’ dis poor fool.”
“Hush, sugar, it was one word, but y’all got the concern bit right.” Rogue weaves her fingers through his hair again, cupping the hinge of his jaw and stroking his cheek with her thumb as his reverent hands caress her belly. She still savors the brush of skin-on-skin, touch without fear. She prays she’ll never fully get used to the feeling.
He stares up at her with eyes so carefully intense, holding hers until he cares to let her go, that she doesn’t need to hear him say it at all.
“Oh, mon diable…” she sighs, and brushes his hair back from his forehead “He won’t have to live like we did, Remy.” Rogue traces the outline of his face, skims his eyelashes with the barest ghost of touch. “Won’t be no shame in having your eyes, nor mine. We’ll make sure he’s happy, m’love. Best we can.”
He closes his eyes for a long moment and Rogue laces her fingers through his, her palm at the back of his hand, guiding him to feel where the baby moves. Remy smiles, warm and sweet and private, at the sensation. “De sea monkey’s gettin’ big.”
075. Annabel Lee
They’re silent for a long few moments, lying in his bed in the dark. Her eyes watch the curtains waft gently, closer and away, against the rich colors and patterns of the walls beneath the sheen of moonlight, and the scent of his gardens’ magnolia carries past and curls its filigree way around their entwined bodies.
“Place makes all sorts o’ poetry wind through my head,” she murmurs, curled against his side against the cool New Orleans night. Her fingertips trace the ridges of his collarbone.
“Oh?” Remy presses an absent kiss to the top of her head, his arm around her shoulders tightening briefly. “What sort?”
She speaks with a voice that sounds almost trance-like, the murmured stanza soft like the breeze on his skin. “We loved with a love that was more than love, I and my Annabel Lee,” Rogue murmurs against his skin. “With a love that the winged seraphs in heaven coveted her and me. And this was the reason that long ago, in this kingdom by the sea, a wind blew out of a cloud, chilling my beautiful Annabel Lee.”
“So that her highborn kinsmen came and bore her away from me,” Remy intones when she pauses, nuzzling into his shoulder. “To shut her up in a sepulchre in this kingdom by the sea.” He combs gentle fingers through her hair, smoothing the tangles from it. “Bayou’s close enough t’ the sea t’ trigger de memory.”
She smiles softly up into his eyes. “Ah didn’t know y’ knew it.”
“Awful sad words fo’ a pretty night, chere.”
“You ever known Poe to write somethin’ uplifting?” Rogue asks, letting him tuck her head beneath his chin.”Call me crazy, but this one’s never really felt all that sad t’ me, though.”
“What part o’ Annabel dyin’ an’ leavin’ her lover behind isn’ sad t’ you?” he asks, holding her to his shoulder.
“It’s that he still loves her, after all that time.” She catches a chill from the open window and snuggles closer, Remy pulling the sheets up higher around her body. “Love like that stays with you. Sustains you. Ah always felt like there was hope in that.”
051. Reading Material
“Just out o’ curiosity,” Rogue asks from her deck chair, holding her oversized sunglasses up off of her eyes, “Why’re you hidin’ my romance novel behind th’ newspaper?”
Remy’s caught deader than a catfish on a hook, so he figures he might as well quit trying to hide it, and tosses the paper down to the grass. The book in question is indeed one of the heaving-breasts-and-burning-loins variety, complete with pink binding and a big, bare-chested Highlander in a kilt cradling a little slip of a redhead gracing the cover. If the cover was a little less trashy, he wouldn’t be feeling quite as emasculated as he does getting caught reading his girlfriend’s guilty pleasure books. “What tipped you off?”
“Well, you’ve been havin’ a hard time holdin’ that newspaper open, for one. ‘S about eight times the size of that book.” Rogue looks at him, eyebrows high, for a moment before grinning and setting her sunglasses back on her nose. “And it was missing from my desk this mornin’.”
“Don’t mean you couldn’ have lost de t’ing you’self,’ he grumbles, and reluctantly dog-ears the page he’s on.
“Ah wasn’t finished with that one yet.” Rogue takes a sip of her iced tea and lets the ice cubes linger on her lips. “An’ Ah always keep the one Ah’m reading in the same place. So, why’d you steal mah book, exactly, lover?”
“Would you believe it’s t’ study why you women insist on readin’ t’ings dat sound like de author don’t know how sex works?” Remy gestures at her with the book in chastisement.
“Not fer a second.”
“Why do you read dis crap, anyway?” he asks. “Makes a man wonder what dese imaginary Fabio-types got dat he don’t.”
“Oh hush up, sugar, y’all know no book can ever compare t’ your sweet Southern lovin’.” She lifts her sunglasses again and winks at him. “Simple. I like t’ laugh at the really bad ones. An’ the really good ones give me ideas.”
“Oh?” He leans over in his chair, raising his eyebrows. “What sort o’ ideas?”
Rogue puts on her best saucy minx face and glances coyly at him through her eyelashes. “Ah can show you later, if y’all feel up to it. An’ don’t tell me how that book ends.”
052. Safe
He rubs his fingers through Rogue’s mess of sleepy curls in slow, even strokes, murmuring close to her ear to chase away the dreams. She whimpers into the pillow clutched to her face, jaw tight and eyes screwed shut against whatever monsters scream and tear their ragged way through her head, and Remy has to stop himself from shaking her awake.
It’s terrifying, holding your lover at night, and never knowing who might wake up in your arms.
“Shhh, sweet girl,” he murmurs, sitting up and drawing her sleeping body into his arms, blankets and all. “It’s okay. Nothin’s gonna touch you while dis one’s right here. You’ safe, wit’ me.”
Rogue struggles against him and her eyes flash open and for just an instant she claws at his body, scared and thrashing at him hard enough to bruise and snarling with malice he knows doesn’t belong to her clouding those terrified eyes-and then it’s over as soon as it began. She slumps forward, burying her face in his chest and twisting her hands in his shirt as if she’d crawl under his skin if she could, as if he’s the only real thing left in the world. His hands splay over her back and cradle the back of her neck, anything to ease her the rest of the way out of her nightmares.
“God, Remy,” she gasps. Her breath sounds tight and labored. “Ah’m so sorry-”
“Not you’ fault,” he says into her hair. “Dat wasn’ you, wakin’ up.”
“But Ah cain’t keep doin’ this t’ you. Ah won’t hurt you if y’ let me come out of it on my own-”
“You didn’ do anythin’ wrong. An’ you’ crazy if you t’ink I would let you sleep through dat.” He leaves kisses at her temples, tilting her chin up to meet his eyes. “Who’s dream was it?”
“Ah couldn’t tell. Felt like I was hanging from my wrists-like the only part of me that could reach th’ floor were my toes. Everythin’ hurt.” Rogue shudders, swallowing hard, and he soothes her with gentle fingers in her hair. “An’ then Ah felt you touching me, an’ tryin’ t’ keep me from hitting you and…that’s not what it felt like, t’ whoever’s memories I was dreamin’ through.”
“Christe, girl…” Remy exhales long and slow. “You know how too many t’ings feel, fo’ never havin’ felt them you’self.”
053. Kisses
“Can Ah ask you a weird, mildly invasive, and most likely very stupid question?” Rogue asks, curled up and held close in his lap, hands planted on his shoulders because there’s nowhere else for her to put them.
“Dat depends,” Remy says, taking the edge of the silk scarf in her fist and tugging the edge out farther across his mouth. He kisses her lips lazily through the sheer fabric. “It ain’ gonna put dis one off kissin’ you, is it?”
He slides his mouth slowly across hers again, biting her bottom lip gently, then licking the spot through the scarf to soothe it away. The feeling goes straight to her head; for someone who’s spent so long believing that her first kiss would also be the last she’d ever receive, even kissing through fabric takes some getting used to.
“Well, christ, Rem, Ah hope not!” The words come out breathy and fast, and she modifies the previous sentiment in her head; kissing someone as talented and well-practiced at it as Remy LeBeau is going to take a lot of getting used to.
“Den go ‘head.”
“D’you think it’s…” She wants to lay her head on his shoulder, but instead keeps her eyes traveling over his face, gaze lingering at his mouth and eyes. “Is it awful for you, havin’ t’ kiss me like this?”
He chuckles low in his throat and it feels so nice against her body pulled up flush to his. “Does it feel like dis one minds, t’ you?” he says, leaving little kisses on her lips between the words. Rogue leans into him.
“Yeah, but-” She has to pause every so often until he releases her mouth for breath. “-when Ah know y’all can have any normal girl y’ want-”
“Lies.”
“Don’t-sass me, Remy-” Her train of thought comes closer and closer to running off the rails with every kiss and she knows she’s blushing like a nun in a strip club from the sensation coursing through her veins; it’s alternately maddening and wonderful. “-y’all know women fall-all over themselves fer you-t’ notice them.”
“Not dat,” he says, and when he claims her mouth again she’s extremely glad he’s holding her, or she’d have never managed to stay on her feet. “I know you know dis one’ll never want anyone but you. You’ve ruined me fo’ everyone else out dere.” His arms tighten briefly around her, holding her against the rumble of laughter in his chest. “B’sides, ain’t no one who kisses like you do.”
054. In Control
“You afraid?”
Remy’s voice is gentle, and he’s perfectly still, poised above her, content to wait until she’s comfortable and certain and it pulls at her heart so strongly Rogue thinks she might choke on it. She has absolutely nothing to be afraid of, not now-with any luck, not for a long time. She should feel something stronger than hesitance-something like triumph or relief, anything but fear. She’s lost enough of her life to fear.
“A little.” Her hands rest lightly on his shoulders, just enough to convince herself she’s still in charge of her power. The hard part is, she feels no different working to hold it back than she’d felt before. She won’t know if she’s lost the reins until something goes wrong, and that’s what scares her.
“Dis one won’t touch unless you’ confident in you’ control, Rogue.” He runs his palm down her arm, stopping just above the cuff of her sleeve. “S’gonna take some gettin’ used to, not worryin’ ‘bout hurtin’ other people anymore. It won’t kill me t’ wait a little longer, ‘til you’ sure o’ you’ command over you’self.”
“Ah don’t know why it’s still shakin’ me up so much.” She pushes a nervous hand through her hair. “The professor even said the pull o’ my power will only be there when Ah need it t’ be-”
“I know what de professor said, chere.” Red eyes catch and hold hers. No judgment. No disappointment. No expectations. “All dat matters is what you feel you’ capable of.”
Rogue bites her lip. He can see the apprehension still swimming beneath green irises, but she pulls his head down and coaxes his lips apart with hers and it’s sweet and fervent and so different but still so achingly normal a feeling that it makes his teeth hurt. Shining, overfull eyes meet his when she lets him go. Remy’s gaze lingers on those wine-dark, well-kissed lips, turned up just a little at the corners, and leans a little more of his weight against her as she slides bare hands up under his shirt. The pads of her fingers tease gingerly, then press and stroke and slide far up his back.
“If you c’n trust me…Ah c’n trust me,” she says.
“Girl, ‘m about t’ ‘trust you’ all over,” Remy growls into her mouth, sliding his hands beneath the hem of her shirt, and when he kisses her again she feels the smile on his lips.
055. Empathy
Rogue goes through phases of wanting to dip through his head and gather up Remy’s thoughts in her fist, to store them for rifling through at her leisure. She’ll glance at him and see those red eyes glazed and lost in thought, and often wonder what sends him so far away. Sometimes she’s loath to snap him out of it, when she can tell he’s just bored and she can admire him without being teased for it.
This is not one of those times.
Kitty had warned her that Remy hasn’t been himself, in hopes that Rogue might be the one to shake him free of his own head, and she’s nervous to see that his status hasn’t changed much from Kitty’s description. Remy leans heavily on his elbows on the table, hands fisted in his hair, and seems to radiate an aura around him so dark she can practically feel the charge in the air.
There is a charge in the air the closer she approaches. It makes the hair on her arms and the back of her neck stand up.
“Ah won’t ask what’s wrong,” she murmurs from behind him. “But Ah will ask if you’d mind the company.” He says nothing. Rogue slides into the chair beside him. “Alright, fine. Ah’ll sit here with you anyway.” Her voice is soft, hands in her lap, very careful not to invade his space unless he wants her there. “But sugar, Ah won’t touch unless you say it’s okay.”
“Don’t,” he rasps.
They sit there in silence for what feels like a lifetime. The muscles in his arms and back stand out in sharp relief, and she wants more than anything to smooth her hands over him and soothe the aches away. It hurts her to watch him hurting. It hurts to even breathe.
The longer Remy remains motionless, the higher the worry climbs up her spine until she has to physically restrain herself from shivering from it. Her hands sit clenched, white-knuckled, on her knees.
Eventually, long after Rogue has lost track of the time, he reaches over and pries her fingers from her knees, taking her hands in his and gently rubbing the kinks out of her joints. He falls into a rhythm, and neither speaks nor meets her eyes.
“Thank you, love, for always protectin’ me like this,” she says, voice thick with emotion that doesn’t feel appropriate to force on him just now. “But, Rem, please, sweetheart, let me do the same for you. Let me take care of you.” Her fingers slide from his loose grip, and she cradles his face in her hands. His gaze is turned away. She doesn’t force him to look at her, but leans forward, and leaves the lightest of kisses against his forehead. “Ah’ll shoulder this with you, whatever it is. And Ah can carry a lot.”
Remy turns his face into her hand and kisses her palm through the glove, and she stands, threading her fingers through his. “Let it rest, ‘til you’re ready, okay?” Her thumb rubs the back of his hand. “But come to bed, for now?”
056. Someday
“Come away wit’ me, someday.”
Rogue looks at him with what Remy can only call thinly veiled shock. She’s sprawled out on his chest in bed, and he’s smiling up at her and a rush of warmth floods through her veins; her shudder against him feels heavenly, and her cheeks color prettily and Remy wants to laugh and kiss her and roll her over beneath him all at once. He settles on throwing his weight to the side and pressing her back into the mattress, growling and nuzzling at the curve of her shoulder ‘til she squirms and flails and begs to stop the tickling.
“What on earth’s gotten into you, Remy LeBeau?” she giggles, and her arms snake around his neck when he stops to let her catch her breath.
“We’ll have everyt’ing we need,” he says, leaning down to kiss her collarbone. “De stars an’ de moon an’ de open highway, wit’ whatever we can fit on dis one’s bike. We’ll go wherever y’ want.”
He’s beautiful when he’s happy. She can see this imagined life playing out behind those stunning red eyes.
“We’ll have chowder in New England, an’ den take off fo’ de pizza an’ a baseball game in Chicago, o’ we c’n drive across de deserts in Arizona an’ New Mexico an’ try not t’ die o’ thirst along de way.”
“Dying of thirst,” Rogue laughs, finger combing his hair back out of his face, “How romantic!”
“You can teach dis one t’ ski up in de mountains. I’ll even let you laugh when dis one falls on de bunny hills.” He kisses behind her ear, and she can feel the warmth of his lips shielded by her hair. “O’ dis one’ll take you down t’ New Orleans. Show you his old life. De sights an’ sounds an’ tastes o’ dat beautiful place.”
His voice softens, and Remy’s mouth wanders over her as if she’s some fragile, precious thing to be swathed up in softness and guarded. He’s reverent and attentive to the little sounds she makes each time he touches her, and when he meets her eyes again his own are warm and far away. “You’d love my city, chere. It’s jus’…alive, like nowhere else in de world. It shifts under you’ eyes, while you’ watchin’. But somehow…it don’ really change. ‘S always de same place dis one remembers.”
“Home never does, does it?” Rogue murmurs. “Ah’d love t’ see your world through your eyes, Remy. She pulls his body down to rest against her, wrapped up in her arms. “Someday, sweetness. We’ll run away together, an’ live that life. Ah want my life all tangled up with yours.”
057. Memorize
Soft, flickering light filters through the sheets she’d run above them, gilding Remy’s olive skin in gold. The candles are far enough away not to be jostled, she’d made sure of that-the last thing she needs is something else to concentrate on not ruining when it takes enough effort just to work on keeping her power guarded back, and she can’t even tell when that’s working.
It’s a hard thing to do when every sensation is heightened like never before. And even harder when you’ve built a blanket fort for the occasion.
Hours ago, Rogue had grabbed his hands and pulled him up the stairs after her, laughing and dodging questions all the way, and the stunned silence when she’d opened his bedroom door had been worth every single second she’d ever spent training to hold her powers back like this. And then worth it all over again as soon as he’d heard her dress fall to the floor.
She’d stopped the mad dash Remy’s hands had made for his belt, stilling his fingers, and worked at the fastenings herself, slow and deliberate until he’d pulled his shirt one-handed over his head. Just her fingertips had run across his bare chest before she’d pulled him after her into her blanket badger den.
And then…she’d just held him. Drinking him in with her hands, curled up in the piles of pillows she’d stuffed in here from both of their rooms, re-learning every familiar line and shape of him all over again. As if it were all new.
Rogue takes the most time, now, exploring the planes of his face. First with her fingertips, then with gentle, chaste kisses in their place, she memorizes his features with her skin. He’s closed his eyes, and she watches the candlelight arc across his eyelids, his mouth. It catches on the stubble on his jawline and she runs her palm across it, marveling and reveling in the faint scratch against her skin. He’s handsome and perfect and patient with her and the enormity of what he’s just trusted her with wells in her throat so high and thick there’s no space left for tears.
Remy feels her fall still, and when she leans her forehead against his he murmurs low against her lips, as if to keep it from the air. “Ain’ never loved someone as much as you, chere.”
058. Movie Night
“Rahne, honey,” Rogue says, wedging herself further underneath Remy’s arm and peeking between her fingers at the screen, “You’re sure this is the movie y’all meant to watch?”
“Yep!” The seven-year-old beams, plunking herself back into the vacated spot between Remy’s feet and shoving a handful of fresh popcorn into her mouth. “Watch this! The alien baby’s about to rip through his chest!”
“Thanks fer th’ warnin’, pup,” Rogue groans, hands tight over her eyes when the screeching and death gurgles emanating from the TV herald the alien’s gruesome arrival, and Remy laughs far harder than is warranted at her squeamishness.
“All o’ de t’ings you’ seen wit’ de X-Men, chere, an’ you’ afraid o’ Alien? Alien?! Out o’ de t’ousands o’ movies in de world, dis is de t’ing dat scare you de most-?”
“Oh, leave me alone, Remy,” she flushes, “Y’all knew Ah wanted t’ watch Star Wars!”
“If you say so, chere,” Remy obliges, innocent as an angel, and moves to lift his arm from around her shoulders.
Rogue dives for his arm and hugs it with both of hers before he can get away. “Dammit, you know what Ah meant!”
“You said t’ leave y’ alone,” he says, raising his eyebrows and doing a bang-up job of holding back the laughter welling in his chest, “If you’ gon’ skewer dis one fo’ jus’ bein’ attentive, ‘m gon’ go sit on de floor wit’ de pup an’ leave you t’ suffer on de couch all by you’self-”
“Shhhhh!” Rahne turns around and glares at the both of them from the floor. “I can’t hear the movie!” Sufficiently appeased by their sudden silence, the tiny readhead turns back to the screen.
“Okay, fine. Ah’ll stick this one out with y’all,” Rogue whispers, “But Ah am not watchin’ Paranormal Activity with th’ two o’ you!”
059. As We Go Along
“Mind if dis one sits?”
Rogue motions a yes with a dip of her head, and Remy pulls up a spot beside her on the tile.
“Come here often?” He stares out across the sky. There’s nothing but a few sparse clouds to break the view out over Xavier’s property. The night is silent - and eerily pretty.
“Ah used to.” She brushes windblown hair back behind her ear. “Give you credit, though-y’all are the only one who’s ever come lookin’ for me up here.”
He smiles wanly. “Got a lot o’ experience wit’ rooftops, m’self.” Red eyes cut sideways, studying her; Remy gathers the apprehension and loneliness from her posture, how she sits curled in on herself, knees drawn up to her chest. But when he reaches just a little, she feels…hollow. She radiates with it. “What brings you up t’ de roof dis late?”
“Good place t’ think. ‘S quiet.” He watches a shiver arc down Rogue’s spine. “The stars don’t look at you like y’ owe ‘em an explanation.”
“Chere, if dis one-”
She cuts him off. “No, Rem, Ah promise, ‘s nothin’ you did. Actually,” she sighs, “You’ve been more’n wonderful to me. Ah’ve had so much fun with you, the couple o’ times we’ve gone out t’gether.”
“What’s gnawin’ at y’ so fierce, den,” he asks, allowing himself to really look at her for the first time since he’d found her here. “If it’s okay o’ me t’ pry.”
“Ah’m not used t’ bein’ treated like that, Remy. It’s…hard t’ accept sweetness when y’ know y’ could kill someone if y’ let them come too close.” Rogue breathes in deep. “Since Ah was fifteen, at best Ah’ve been a pariah. At worst, Ah become a game t’ people. “
She shivers again, and Remy shrugs out of his jacket, draping it over her shoulders. She looks at him with hesitance coloring her gaze. “Game?” he asks.
“First t’ get nearest t’ the Untouchable Girl wins. Ah’m a challenge t’ be overcome. Ah stopped bein’ a person a long time ago.” Rogue draws his coat closer around her neck and buries her nose in the collar. “Ah expected you t’ be no better.”
He laughs. “Den why’d you agree t’ a date wit’ dis one in de firs’ place?”
Finally, he ekes a smile out of her. “T’ shut y’all up!” She faces him for the first time, at last; he hadn’t realized he’d been anxious for her to turn to him until she meets his eyes. “Ah’m glad Ah did.”
Remy scoots closer, and Rogue almost seems to withdraw further into his coat. “What’s so wrong about it, dat y’ had t’ come up here t’ mull it over?”
“Ah’ve never…Ah don’t know how t’ do this relationship thing,” she says. Her fingers tighten around the lapels of his coat. “Ah can’t be close t’ you. Ah can’t kiss you, or sleep next t’ you at night. An’ y’all are so sweet. Y’ should have someone who can reciprocate that affection, rather ‘n hold you at arms’ length forever.”
“Y’ can, chere. Dis one don’ ask fo’ much.” He draws her body underneath his arm, and he can tell she wants to curl in closer, but holds back. Remy tightens his grip on her briefly, and when he presses a kiss to her hair she stiffens just the slightest for an instant. “We find our own ways ‘round it, if closeness’s what you want. Figure t’ings out as we go along, oui?”
060. Penny For Your Thoughts
Remy can’t decide which feels nicer, the warm water or the warm girl leaning her back against his chest. The pool is a perfect eighty or so degrees and he’s sunk down in it almost to his chin-the ambient temperature at 12:30 AM is not nearly so forgiving, but unfortunately, keeping one’s air passages above the water is necessary for breathing, and so his cheeks will continue to suffer at fifteen degrees cooler than the rest of him. Well, one of his cheeks will. The other rests comfortably against Rogue’s hair. She’s snuggled up cozy as can be in the wetsuit she’d insisted would keep him safe, and up to her nose in the water. He studies her half-submerged, wavering reflection, and she’s pensive. Far more relaxed than she’s seemed to be in days. Even the ever-present crease between her eyebrows is gone.
“Penny fo’ you’ thoughts, chere?” he asks, working at keeping the chlorine out of his mouth.
She lifts her chin out of the water and silent laughter he can feel against his body vibrates through her. “Ain’t enough pennies in the whole U.S. Mint fer all th’ thoughts in my head.”
“Fine, penny fo’ jus’ de ones dat’re you’ own, den.”
“Gonna cost y’ at least fifty cents, there, tiger,” she says, and submerges again.
“Dat much?” Remy kisses the top of her head when she comes back up for air. “Might be able t’ swing it. Jus’ fo’ you, though.”
“Mmm.” Rogue settles back against his chest. “Ah’m thinkin’ about how different things would be, if we didn’t need t’ do this anymore.” She turns in his lap, elucidating further when his expression clouds. “If we didn’t run t’ save people who’d rather have us locked up or dead.” Her voice is even, contemplative, with none of the bitterness his would ring with if asking the same question.
He kisses her hair again, draping his arms around her shoulders. He wishes to the empty sky that someday they won’t have to anymore. “Depends. Would take a lot less effort jus’ t’ stay alive, dat’s sure enough.”
“What’d we even do with ourselves?” she asks, and lays her head against his shoulder. “Besides argue?”
“Don’t know,” Remy brushes her hair from her shoulder and nips at her through the fabric. “Get jobs. Pay bills. Have mo’ creative sex den we’ve been gettin’.”
Rogue smiles. “Or y’all would jus’ keep stealin’ from rich folk an’ Ah’d be busy tryin’ not t’ accidentally kill anyone. An’ makin’ sure y’all don’t get yerself killed.”
“Dis one notices you didn’ nay-say de creative sex part.” He grins into her shoulder.
She dips down and spits a mouthful of water at him. “Now why on Earth would Ah do that?”
“T’ torment dis one, fo’ sure.” He nods with authority, throwing the back of his hand to his forehead and throwing an overblown woe-is-me face in her general direction, and Rogue has to bite back giggles when the breeze raises shivers on his bare skin. “Add ‘tormentin’ poor, lovesick Cajuns’ t’ you’ list of t’ings you’d be doin’. M’ sure dat wouldn’ change much.”
061. Learn Something New
“You plannin’ on gettin’ up anytime soon?”
“Go ‘way, Ah’m dead.”
Remy walks over to where she’s sprawled, spread-eagled, on the danger Room floor. He looms over her, his dark head of hair standing out against the blank, powered-down walls. “Y’ look pretty ‘live, t’ me.”
“Ah’m definitely dead.” Rogue rolls her head to the side to better look at him, and feigns normal speech as hard as she can to keep the focus off of her flaming cheeks. “Cain’t even move. Clearly ex-animate.”
He rolls his eyes and stoops to drape her arm about his shoulders. “Some cheese would go well wit’ dat whine o’ yours, girl.” She happens to have just enough energy left to stick her tongue out at him, but not quite enough to support any of her own weight. “Um. Little help, chere?”
Very laboriously, she pushes herself into a sitting position, bolstering herself against his shoulder. “Do Ah have to?”
Remy works an arm beneath her knees. “‘Case you forgot, dis one’s adversaries jus’ got him kicked out o’ his home, ‘stead o’ bestowin’ dat superhuman strength you’ so adverse t’ usin’ at de moment.”
“If a building jus’ collapsed on you, y’all wouldn’t want t’ move, either,” she says, arms tight around his neck as he lifts her. She can’t remember being this bone-tired in a long, long time. Or embarrassed by her performance. “DR simulation or not.”
“Look at it dis way,” he says, trying his best to dispel the blush from her face and stopping at the door while Rogue sluggishly punches in the shutdown and lock keys. “You now know you’ capable o’ liftin’ whole stories o’ buildings off you’self. Handy. Y’ learn some’ting new every day.”
“Unshakable optimist, you are, LeBeau.”
“At you’ service, m’lady.”
“Oh really?” One eyebrow arches upward. “‘Cause milady here could use a massage right about now.”
He rolls dark gemstone eyes while she bats hers prettily at him. “Woman, ain’t it enough dat you’ gettin’ door-t’-door service? Now y’ need spa treatment t’ go wit’ it?”
From up in Remy’s arms, she’s so close to him and wants so badly to run her tongue around the shell of his ear… “Ah can tell y’ a few other things that could use some servicin’, now that y’all mention it-”
“Girl, you’ shameless.”
Rogue winks. “Been learnin’ from one helluva fresh Cajun who’s been stickin’ ‘round these parts lately. Maybe y’all know him?”
He nips at her forearm slung across his chest. “I t’ink we’ve met once o’ twice.”
062. Breathless
He smiles a wicked grin against her even though he knows she’s too wrapped-up to see, her hands clenched in the sheets and whimpering soft little sounds at the back of her throat like there’s nothing in this world left but the feel of him warm and wet between her legs. She trembles and he does his best to hold her still-better safe when all that’s between him and her body is a single filmy length of silk. She’s never done this before, and there’s no way he’s going to deny it to her by being careless.
He works her with his mouth until she’s a tangled mess, her insides knotted up and her bitten wine-red lips caught between her teeth. She’s close, flushed and beautiful and wound taut as a harpstring; he feels it in her every shallow breath, and draws out every gasp and sigh and moan until she’s damn near sobbing from sensation. And god, her hand runs gently through his hair and then he’s had it, no more soft sweet leisure-he’s hot and deft and slick and she can’t, she can’t, she can’t, no more, my love, please-
She spasms hard and before the feeling fully washes through her Remy gathers her up in his arms, easing her down and stroking her back until she finds her breath. Her hands fist in his shirt and he kisses her hair, holds her as if she’d unravel if he lets go. Rogue tucks herself close against his body until the shaking stops, and lets them both slide, breathless, into sleep.
063. City Boy
“We goin’ on a date an’ workin’ on you’ skittishness,” he’d said, and rolled Rogue out of bed and brought her coffee while she’d dressed and whined and protested. “Can’t be crowd-shy fo’ever, petite.”
It’s the truth, and she hates it. If not for Remy, she’d have been perfectly content to hole up with the X-Men forever, where she knows anyone she might hurt at least should have seen it coming. Cities are not places she enjoys very much, and New York is likely the worst of the worst. She’s thankful they’re going at odd hours on a Tuesday; thoughts of braving rush hour or throngs of weekend tourists aren’t terribly pleasant mental pictures.
Remy, on the other hand, is as at home in the crowds as a fish in the sea, and helps her weave through the crush of humanity with as much ease as anybody else. Somehow he just knows-even though she tries her best to hide it-the instant she starts feeling threatened. On the subway he holds to the bar above the seats and shields her with his body, leaning down to smile and talk while she keeps her limbs tucked in close as she can to herself. They exude such an aura of happily taken that Rogue even catches one or two city folk glance over with smiles on their lips-a feat in and of itself. New Yorkers don’t smile at strangers. Or anyone, for that matter.
Rogue relaxes once they make it to the Met. The wide galleries and sparse visitors give her a chance to uncoil the knot of apprehension in her stomach, and finally concentrate on this ‘date’ he’d promised. And the golden opportunity for Remy-watching. She follows as he pulls her from one exhibit to the next, pointing out this artist or that one, and though she can’t come close to absorbing it all, he’s taken his sunglasses off, and that in itself is a beautiful thing.
He’s happy here.
Remy slinks up and holds her from behind when a horde of field-tripping sixth graders tromps around them. In the rowdy din of grade-schoolers, no one else hears when he whispers the Renoir the frazzled tour guide’s pointing out is a fake. He knows because his père has the original hanging up at home in New Orleans. And when he kisses her hair, Rogue murmurs that she hopes someday she’ll get to see it with him.
064. Fever
He grabs her wrist before she has the chance to swing her legs out of bed.
“Don’ go.”
The thin notes of pleading in his rough, sleep-hewn voice wrap her heart in their fists and squeeze until it’s painful. “Remy,” she says gently, tugging her hand from his grasp and smoothing it back over his sweat-dampened forehead and hair. “You’re burnin’ up. Ah’m jus’ gonna get y’all some water, alright?”
He slides his arms around Rogue’s waist, his cheek against her hip, and pulls her up close as he can. His fingers dig into her flesh. Like he’s afraid she’ll disappear if he lets go. It’s unsettling; she’s taken care of him like this before, but this time he’s been just far enough from himself to be…a little frightening. “Not yet,” he begs, and she fractures inside for him.
“Sweetheart,” Rogue murmurs, bending down to kiss the top of his head; the heat radiating from his skin burns through her shirt. She worries about him. She knows she probably doesn’t have to. But he’s sicker than the proverbial dog, and she’s going to hover, all kinds of nervous and protective, until he’s back to normal. “You need t’ take somethin’ t’ bring down the fever aches, an’ t’ keep you from dehydratin’. Ah promise, Ah’ll be right back next t’ you in a minute. Less than that.”
Remy gives her one last squeeze and lets his palm slide along her back until she’s too far for him to reach anymore. He listens to the fall and rise of her feet padding down the hall and back, and when she sits back on the edge of the bed he wants to yank her back beneath the covers and be held for the rest of the afternoon. But he raises his head and swallows when she hands him the water and painkiller, and waits to re-attach himself to her side until she slips herself back between the sheets.
“Go back t’ sleep, love,” Rogue whispers, pressing a kiss between his shoulder blades. She pulls the blankets back up over his back; his fever-hot skin scorches through his shirt and hers, and she has to resist the worry-wrought urge to take his temperature again. A wave of shivers arcs down his spine and she wraps her body as best she can around his, murmuring soft reassurance just shy of his ear.
Slowly, the chills subside.
065. Love Hurts
Rogue collides with his back and knocks the wind completely out of him, her nose buried right smack between his shoulder blades, in that spot that’s always itchy but he can’t quite reach to scratch for himself.
“…Ow.”
“Love hurts sometimes, sugar.” Even muffled by his own body, Remy can still hear the smile in her voice. “You smell so good.”
He sucks breath back into burning lungs, unsure whether to feel pleased or annoyed. “Good t’ know…?” he croaks.
She nuzzles him through his shirt, and he wants to be annoyed with her. He really does. But there’s something so inherently lovable about being held from behind and praised for something so little and silly that he cannot for the life of him stay irritated. And he might hate her just the tiniest bit for it.
“M’ sorry fer that,” she says, absently stroking his stomach. “S’ hard sometimes t’ realize how hard Ah can hit.”
“Lies an’ heresy.”
“It’s the honest truth, Mr. LeBeau.”
“You’ nose is growin’. Dis one can feel it pokin’ into his-”
“Aw, cut it out, lover, Ah said Ah was sorry.” Rogue rubs her cheek against his shirt for good measure. Her arms, though, don’t loosen up even a shred.
“Fine,” he groans, “Apology accepted. Now, you plannin’ on givin’ dis one back his spine anytime soon…?”
She bites him. Just hard enough to be irksome in that unreachable spot. And Remy would be willing to bet good money she’s grinning like the Cheshire cat. “Not done sniffin’ yer gorgeous man-smell yet, so…nope.”
066. Fleeting Feeling
It’s endless; the ever-changing, moment-by-moment drip of her emotions across his mind whenever she gets close is a thousand tiny hair-thin syringes, each forcing a different iridescent drug into his system. Each wisp of a thought in her head carries with it something else, another wave of feeling worlds away from the last, and by the time Remy can twine it around his fingers and focus she’s off again feeling something else in a hundred different directions that feel to him like a hundred different hooks beneath his skin all tugging him to follow to a hundred different places. There’s never a moment’s peace, with her in the room.
She’s infuriating.
She’s fascinating.
She has no idea.
Rogue catches him staring and glares acid at him from above her cereal bowl. He throws her a roguish grin in return, laughing in his head at his own pun for the instant it takes the irritation she radiates to turn into something…else.
Her emotions curl around him like the smoke trailing from a just-extinguished candle. Threads of vexation and amusement and something that tastes like the metallic tang of lust crawl across his senses and he wants to grab onto their edges, to pull them in like kite strings, but the harder he tries the faster they slip through his fingers. She gets up to rinse her bowl out in the sink.
“Y’all done leerin’ at me yet, Cajun?”
He shakes his hair out of his eyes. Annoyance rolls off her in waves, but that thin haze of of amusement still sits beneath it all. “Give it a minute. Ain’t had de chance t’ take in dose pretty long legs o’ yours yet-”
She shoves past him on her way out.
067. Day Away
Remy tosses her the keys to his motorcycle and yells to start it up, and Rogue darts off with a squeak of excitement that he’s finally trusting her with his baby. Not to drive it, mind you-just turn it on-but still. It’s been months since he’d let her start even one of Scott’s old fixer-uppers.
He watches her run off to the garage with a smile and a shake of his head. Girl appreciates the little things in life, that’s for sure. He takes his time wandering out to meet her; might as well let her puzzle it out for a minute before showing up and embarrassing her before she’s even got the key in the ignition. So he stops to grab and scarf down a pop-tart on the way and sneak-attack-headlock-noogie Jubilee as she passes him in the hall. And dodge the shoe she takes off and chucks at him for it.
“What’s the bag for?” she calls after his retreating back, scampering to retrieve her sneaker.
“Food. Blanket. Towels. De usual outdoorsy stuff.”
Jubilee runs after him and bounces by his elbow on the way down the corridor, grinning that knowing, sly, eyeroll-inducing grin that always means suggestive musings are forming in that little head of hers. “You’re stealing Rogue away to go have hot, wild sex on some secret little beach all afternoon, aren’t you?” she sing-songs, sliding pink glasses down the bridge of her nose and waggling her eyebrows at him.
“Theoretically,” Remy pushes her glasses back up on her face and ruffles her hair, leaving her grinning smarmily after him in the hall. “If dat was de desired aim fo’ de day, dis one sho’ as all hell ain’t gonna be confirmin’ nor denyin’ it t’ you.”
“Wait, though,” she asks, trotting up behind him at the door. “So, how would that even work, exactly…?” Another raise of the eyebrows and she’s grinning like a madwoman again, rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet.
He can hear the purr of his motorcycle from here and tosses an exaggerated wink over his shoulder, striding off to make sure Rogue hasn’t set his baby on fire.
“Trade secret, petite. Y’ know how dat is.”
068. At Home
“Je t’aime.”
Her voice is muffled, arms draped around his shoulders and lips buried in his hair, and Remy turns his face into her neck.
“Je t’aime, aussi, petite.” He presses a kiss to her throat. “Like when y’ speak like dat.”
“Y’all took me t’ the French Quarter.” Rogue says. “Ah’m jus’ tryin’ t’ blend in.”
“Girl, have y’ looked at de people in dis park?” He laughs against her collarbone. “Pretty sure Remy’s de only one who ain’ a tourist here. You blend in more’n de natives.”
She nuzzles his hair and smiles, heart welling up into her mouth until she can’t contain it and it spills out into words that aren’t enough to hold it. “Ah’m glad for that.”
His lips turn up at the corners. “Fo’ what, sweet?”
Rogue traces circles into his shirt with her fingertips, and he lounges in her arms, awash in the warm glow of her contentment. It envelops him like sun on bare skin. “That y’ feel like you belong here again.”
He reaches up to cradle the back of her neck in his hand, fingers stroking through the soft hair at her nape. The breath he draws in is long and sweet and colored with more things than one man should ever have the right to feel. “Ain’ nothin’ like bein’ home.”
069. Southern Charm
She flounces down the stairs in a sundress and a cowboy hat and Remy has to clap his hand over his mouth to keep from laughing out loud.
“Nice giddyup-I mean, getup,” he laughs as Rogue skirts around him in the hall.
“Laugh all y’ want, Swamp Rat.” She twirls and waltzes backward down the corridor, facing him with a smirk turning up the corners of her mouth. “Y’all are just jealous Ah look better in one o’ these babies than you do.”
“Ain’ never heard o’ no Cajun cowboys, chere.”
“That don’t make no difference.” Remy could swear she’s exaggerating the sway of her hips beneath that skirt. “Yer datin’ a Southern girl. It’s inevitable that y’all wear one o’ these at some point in yer life.”
“Over dis one’s dead body.”
Her laughter rings through the kitchen as she goes about loading up the cooler with iced tea and lunch. “Careful what y’ wish for, lover, or Ah’ll have y’all buried in one.”
“Remind dis one again why he agreed to dis?” he groans. “Seems hokey even fo’ you, girl.”
“‘Cause y’ love me.”
“Yeah, we’ll see about dat when y’ start steppin’ all over Remy’s toes.”
“Hush up, sugar,” Rogue chides, standing on her toes to kiss behind his ear. “It’ll be fun. B’sides, you’ll have Piotr there t’ suffer with ya. He ain’t never been square dancin’ either.”
“Somehow dis one doubts de Man-o’-Steel would be too wounded if Kitty stomps on his feet.” He sidles up beside her and leans against the counter. “Dis one’s flesh-and-blood toes couldn’ take it.”
“Oh, come on, Rem,” she wheedles, nudging him with her shoulder. “Please be a good sport about this?”
“Since y’ asked so nicely…” he sighs heavily, and he knows he’s going to regret this in about twelve seconds, but he steals her hat and tugs her body up close, adopting his best Southern accent low and sultry in his throat. “But Ah’ve a powerful urge t’ kiss you, Miss Anna, an’ y’all will have t’ bribe me for mah cooperation with some sweetness.”
“Well, then, Mr. LeBeau,” she smiles, her lips hovering just shy of his. “Ah’m pretty sure that can be arranged.”
070. Milkshakes
“Vanilla.”
“Nope. Strawberry.”
“Oh no, you’ crazy. Vanilla’s where it’s at.”
“Not as crazy as y’all. There’s so much more flavor in strawberry ice cream-”
“Non, petit, but dis one’ll let you delude you’self to you’ heart’s content.”
“Ah’m tellin’ you, Cajun, strawberry-”
“-Will never compare t’ vanilla in de milkshake world, Miss River Rat. De sooner y’ accept dat fact, den de sooner-”
“What fact, Bayou Boy? All Ah’m hearin’ is a fat load o’ crap from an untrustworthy s-!”
Rogue squeals and takes a handful of water to the face as he flings it from the sink, and by the time she wipes the dish suds from her face Remy is braced against the counter, his shoulders shaking with silent laughter.
“Ohhh, that is it, Remy Lebeau!” She dips her hand into the open container of chocolate ice cream, her white gloves be damned, and smears it all down the front of his white wifebeater.
He startles backwards from the shock of cold against his skin and glowers, red eyes wide and burning while her green ones spill over with mirth. “De hell, woman?!” he shouts, and peels off the shirt before the gobs of ice cream can slide from the fabric to the floor. She wolf-whistles long and low as he balls it up and chucks it onto the table.
“Truce?” Rogue grins, extending the hand not covered in ice cream. He eyes it for a moment before grabbing it and giving her one strong shake.
“Truce.”
“We decided on chocolate milkshakes t’ avoid that argument in th’ first place.” she says, and resumes scooping big dollops of ice cream into the blender. “Shame on y’all fer pickin’ fights.”
“An’ so you didn’ have t’ wash de blender twice, yeah,” Remy grouses, “but now you better be plannin’ t’ wash dis one’s laundry fo’ pullin’ dat chocolate stunt.”
“Not ‘til y’all run outta clothes,” she says, running a finger down the center line of his chest. “If y’all wait fer me t’ do it, you’ll be walkin’ around shirtless a lot more often.”
071. Gone
In all their time together, if the day ever came, he’d always expected to be the one to do the leaving. He’d never imagined how excruciating it would feel to be the one left.
Until one day she just…disappears. Gone from his bed, her room left a mess. A few things missing-some clothing, one of her stuffed bears. The Queen of Hearts he’d tucked behind her ear one day, summers ago, gone from the slats of the balcony door she’d kept it sticking out of. And he knows, now, the worst kind of pain one man can feel.
Most everything else she owns just lays all a-shambles where it was, frozen in time. As if she’d be back at the end of a day out, her things all where she’d strewn them in the days before, and pick her pajamas up off the floor when she yawns and crawls into bed beside him.
It’s impossible. Just the night before they’d walked out to the far edges of the Institute’s land. They’d watched the sun set together. She’d insisted he leave her there alone to think for a little while, as the last watercolor light was fading from the sky, and he had done. She’d called out after him as he’d begun the jog back to the mansion.
She’d said she’s loved him more than she’d ever known one person could feel, and he’d trotted back and kissed her hair and murmured his own love into her ear. Then he’d left her to her thoughts just as she’d asked. He’d fallen asleep before she’d made it back, though he could swear he’d felt her kiss his temple, felt her warm frame depress into the mattress next to him.
After three days he begs, and the professor relents. But she eludes even Cerebro’s reach. His anchor, the single thing that had tethered him to this place, gone up in smoke. Though the mad hope that she’ll make her way back keeps him hanging on, for months, by that last thread.
Eventually they ask him to pack her things away, to make room for new students to move in.
And then there’s nothing of her left here. And he is gone with her.
072. Sneaking Up
“Oh jeez, Rogue, knock it off already.”
“Knock what off?” Rogue asks, shaking herself out of the reverie she’d slipped into. Jubilee looks at her, eyebrows raised, with the most incredulous are-you-kidding-me expression she’d worn in…at least the last week.
“Um. You’ve been with him for over a year,” she hisses, sidling up next to Rogue on the bench and trying to be incognito enough to escape Remy’s notice. Rogue certainly wasn’t the only one admiring the Cajun’s delightfully chiseled shoulders as he chucks the basketball at the hoop over Bobby’s head. “It’s like you still haven’t passed the pining teenager phase, looking at him with those puppy dog eyes. Way too gooey for me.”
“No one’s forcin’ ya t’ monitor how I look at my man, Jubes.” Rogue laughs, and she can feel her ears color. “And Ah do not have puppy-dog eyes.”
“You’re right,” Jubilee amends, looking pointedly from Remy to Rogue and back again. “Those’re come-hither eyes you’re giving him, girl, don’t try an’ fool me.”
“They are not!” Rogue’s jaw drops and she shoves Jubilee with her shoulder. If she wasn’t turning red before, she’s certainly turning red now. “Ah’m not-Ah don’t-not in public!”
“It’s the look of lust, Rogue,” Jubilee says matter-of-factly, holding her tootsie pop between her teeth and grinning around it like the wicked little thing she aspires most to be. The redder Rogue turns, the wider the firecracker’s grin spreads. “Oh my god. You’re absolutely hot for him right now, aren’t you? You’ve been sitting here this whole time watching that body and those arms, and you’re absolutely turned the hell on, aren’t you?” She laughs gleefully. “This is hilarious!”
“Jubilation Lee, one more word out o’ you and Ah swear the gloves will come off and you’ll have more t’ worry about than th’ handprint Ah’m gonna leave on yer face-”
“C’mon, Rogue, what else does that hot hunk of Cajun do to get you all worked up-?”
“Dis one’s kinda interested in de answer t’ dat question, not gonna lie.”
Both girls jump eight feet in the air.
073. Maybe Yes, Maybe No
Knowing that he’s the only one who’s ever seen her like this intoxicates him.
Remy kisses the inside of her knee, lips lingering against her and licking at the raise of gooseflesh he feels through her hose. She’s smiling at him, face flushed with color and warm soft eyes locked with his, his shirt open and pooling behind her where she lounges propped up on her elbows on the bed, and it kills him-kills him-not to be able to smooth his hands over her perfect breasts. Her breath comes heavily, and that doesn’t make it even a shred easier to tear his attention from her skin.
“Ah take it y’all aren’t in such a rush t’ shower anymore?” Rogue asks, drawing her full bottom lip between her teeth as he nips at delicate flesh at the back of her knee and runs one hand up her thigh, the other holding her leg hiked over his shoulder.
“Not so much,” he says, pressing another kiss to the crease of her knee. “Mebbe we make it dat far, mebbe we don’t.”
“M’fine with that either way,” she sighs, and draws him closer with the pressure of her calf against his back.
074. Best We Can
He catches sight of her in the mirror long before she slinks her slightly ungainly body up behind his back. Rogue smooths her hands through his hair, breaking the intent stare he’d fixed his reflection with in her dresser mirror, closing his eyes and leaning into her attentive bare hands. She trails her fingers across his scalp and down to the back of his neck, pressing soft circles there until she feels his muscles melt against her.
“What’s got y’all so pensive, cher, if it’s knotted up yer neck like fisherman’s rope?” she asks him quietly, bending to kiss the top of his head.
Remy turns in the desk chair, draping his arms with slight difficulty around her seven-months swollen belly and kissing her body at the level of his mouth. “Speakin’ dis one’s native tongue? You mus’ be concerned fo’ dis poor fool.”
“Hush, sugar, it was one word, but y’all got the concern bit right.” Rogue weaves her fingers through his hair again, cupping the hinge of his jaw and stroking his cheek with her thumb as his reverent hands caress her belly. She still savors the brush of skin-on-skin, touch without fear. She prays she’ll never fully get used to the feeling.
He stares up at her with eyes so carefully intense, holding hers until he cares to let her go, that she doesn’t need to hear him say it at all.
“Oh, mon diable…” she sighs, and brushes his hair back from his forehead “He won’t have to live like we did, Remy.” Rogue traces the outline of his face, skims his eyelashes with the barest ghost of touch. “Won’t be no shame in having your eyes, nor mine. We’ll make sure he’s happy, m’love. Best we can.”
He closes his eyes for a long moment and Rogue laces her fingers through his, her palm at the back of his hand, guiding him to feel where the baby moves. Remy smiles, warm and sweet and private, at the sensation. “De sea monkey’s gettin’ big.”
075. Annabel Lee
They’re silent for a long few moments, lying in his bed in the dark. Her eyes watch the curtains waft gently, closer and away, against the rich colors and patterns of the walls beneath the sheen of moonlight, and the scent of his gardens’ magnolia carries past and curls its filigree way around their entwined bodies.
“Place makes all sorts o’ poetry wind through my head,” she murmurs, curled against his side against the cool New Orleans night. Her fingertips trace the ridges of his collarbone.
“Oh?” Remy presses an absent kiss to the top of her head, his arm around her shoulders tightening briefly. “What sort?”
She speaks with a voice that sounds almost trance-like, the murmured stanza soft like the breeze on his skin. “We loved with a love that was more than love, I and my Annabel Lee,” Rogue murmurs against his skin. “With a love that the winged seraphs in heaven coveted her and me. And this was the reason that long ago, in this kingdom by the sea, a wind blew out of a cloud, chilling my beautiful Annabel Lee.”
“So that her highborn kinsmen came and bore her away from me,” Remy intones when she pauses, nuzzling into his shoulder. “To shut her up in a sepulchre in this kingdom by the sea.” He combs gentle fingers through her hair, smoothing the tangles from it. “Bayou’s close enough t’ the sea t’ trigger de memory.”
She smiles softly up into his eyes. “Ah didn’t know y’ knew it.”
“Awful sad words fo’ a pretty night, chere.”
“You ever known Poe to write somethin’ uplifting?” Rogue asks, letting him tuck her head beneath his chin.”Call me crazy, but this one’s never really felt all that sad t’ me, though.”
“What part o’ Annabel dyin’ an’ leavin’ her lover behind isn’ sad t’ you?” he asks, holding her to his shoulder.
“It’s that he still loves her, after all that time.” She catches a chill from the open window and snuggles closer, Remy pulling the sheets up higher around her body. “Love like that stays with you. Sustains you. Ah always felt like there was hope in that.”