Scott doesn't signal when he changes lanes. He pulls the bottom of the wheel in an under-over grip and pushes the SUV over the two white streaks running down the blacktop. The headlights bring in no more than twenty meters of the dark freeway at a time. Between the black horizon and the glare of the reflective traffic paint, it's not easy to see the road. Straining his eyes at the windshield is turning up the dial on a headache that started two miles ago.
Gambit can feel the change of the angle of the accelerator through the fiberglass door panel. The sign of a speed limit was a blur in the rearview sooner than it was a thought in either of their heads. They shoot across the desert. A glance at the dash would probably give a number like 95 MPH, but Gambit has his hand ready to pull the door back at any moment.
Beneath his bare fingertips, Gambit notices the metal handle is warm. He's got to think on it twice before he decides it's not a symptom of his mutation at work. He is not self-destructive.
He is not—but he doesn't have a word in his mouth about it. He can hear the faint noise of radio chatter coming from Scott's earpiece. The voice probably belongs to Shadowcat. She's the one they'd leave with Xavier, and the Blackbird and its broken wing.
Maybe he's an acolyte. Maybe he's a pariah. Maybe he's just wrong. But he's never felt so locked out of a loop. He doesn't belong in this vehicle, he shouldn't be standing next to Cylcops of the X-Men, but like a house in Oz in a whirlwind, here he finds himself. He's measured miles with excuses. Now, he's telling himself it doesn't matter. Look. It doesn't matter. Let's just do this. Let's fix this.
Storm is a starburst in the night, a white ribbon against the black-blue sky. Scott nearly flips the car when he sees her rocketing toward the windshield. The tires growl and kick gravel on the shoulder. There is a white gloved hand on the driver's side mirror. Storm is flying alongside the SUV. She's a yell in the darkness, and her volume is contagious. Scott needs to know, but Gambit needs to know now. There's a relay of information in shouts and glares and burning bridges because everything is petty now. The tone of hope and hurry sours to one of accusation, and when he hears the word liar, he's done. Scott's braking, but Gambit doesn't wait. He throws open the sliding side door and bails.
His sight is good without the light of the van. Better, when he stops rolling. The grass is damp. Dew sticks to his boots and causes his soles to slide. The first rays of morning light are up before he is, finally. It's hard to keep on his feet. There's little traction in the splash of red taillights across the two whites streaks in the road.
Author's Notes: I don't know what this is, but I've always felt crummy about my previous X-Men/romy fic. Take this little spit of a story as recompense?
Author's Update (11.26.12): When I first started this sketch, I knew how it would end . . . and then it didn't end that way. ("The world whirls in red streaks and white stripes, lights and paint. It's just lights and paint. It's lights and paint it's lights and paint it's lights and paint ils sont les feux arrire et la peinture mon dieu mon dieu.") It's a panicky, emotional inner-dialogue—something I didn't have in mind at all. I knew after I published the story with that ending that I wanted to go back and make it what it was supposed to be (what the whole story is): neutral, inchoate, and lingering. So, now it ends the way it ends.
In the future, this fic may or may not become a series of drabbles and sketches themed around being in transit.