The next day I wake up with a sense of dread. Maybe it was due to the fact that it was storming heavily (and noisily) outside, or it could have been because I knew that we had double training sessions with Wolverine today, or of course it could be the obvious reason.

Last night at dinner the Professor had asked me if I would be so kind as to show Gambit around. I had of course declined at first and asked if anyone else could do it but then I was met with a small lecture about how I should put aside past differences and not hold old grudges…The Professor thought I just didn't like Gambit because of the whole Magneto thing.

Well, that may be one reason, but I really just wanted to get away from his pursuit of me. Why oh why he wants me I will never know. I mean, I will admit, Gambit is not a bad looking guy, he could probably have any girl he wanted, so why me? The only thing special about me was the fact that he just couldn't have me. Even if I wanted him to have me, he couldn't.

And on top of that, he didn't seem to understand why I wouldn't want him. I'd never thought of him that way, so no, I wasn't about to start now. I didn't think of any guy like that, it was just too dangerous. It would be setting my self up for heartbreak, and I wasn't going to let it happen.

This is too much to think about first thing in the morning. I already made the decision last night: I would be perfectly nice to Gambit today, I would show him around as quickly as I could, and if he flirted with me, I would just try my best not to lose my temper.

The thunder clapped loudly, making me jump. I roll out of bed and stumble my way to the bathroom. I had been mad last night and it had been hard for me to get to sleep so my usually cheery morning self is gone in place of a grumpy and groggy one.

Half an hour later, I step out of the bathroom, showered, dressed, and groomed for the day. It was just turning eight thirty as I exited and usually the sun would have long been up by now, but when I glanced out of my window I'm met with the sight of hard rain and insane winds.

After staring worriedly out at it for a few moments, I quietly make my way downstairs.

Turns out there was no point in my being quiet. The noise level that hits me when I enter the kitchen was ridiculous. Don't ask me why everyone chose not to be their normal selves and sleep in on Saturday, I have no idea.

Tryin my best not to glare at Kitty as she talks loudly about her purchases to Tabitha, I squeeze past Scott to grab a bagel out of the refrigerator. After closing the door, I glance over to see Gambit leaning casually up against the counter, munching on an apple.

Except he doesn't seem to be innocently eating an apple…or maybe I'm just paranoid. He keeps both eyes on me as his tongue darts out and slowly licks his way up the curve of the apple. My eyes widen—he is not seriously—maybe I really am paranoid…

He closes his lips over the fruit, sucking softly before pulling back and continuing to lick it slowly. I jerk my gaze away and hide the blush that is creeping up my cheeks. I glance around—or course no else sees any of this. Poor apple…

"Rogue!"

I jump, startled. Jean smiles at me, not noticing. Then she looks concerned. "Hey…you ok? You look a little flushed…"

I swallow hard as I try not to think about Gambit's tongue. That turns out to be harder than I thought it would be. "I'm ok…" I try to assure her, "What's up?"

She smiles at me again—I swear I think she does it so much to make sure we don't forget how pretty she is. "Just want to let you know, there won't be any training sessions with Wolverine today."

"Why not?" I ask, not entirely concerned—just happy that we have a free weekend.

Jean leans a little closer. "Well, the Professor told me and he didn't say why—but between you and me, I got the feeling that Wolverine has gone on some sort of mission."

I nod. Yep, now I'm really not concerned. At least not as much as Jean was expecting me to be. I get a free weekend for the first time in a long time. And also, I had a feeling that when she said 'between you and me' that it was really between us and everyone else in the room.

As Jean walks away, I glance over my shoulder at Gambit again. He still has both eyes in my direction, studying me. Or more like studying my ass! I quickly turn to face him so he can't see it anymore and he meets my gaze and grins.

Ooookay, keep calm. Keep calm. Keep calm. He can't bother me, I am in my safe place in my head, and when I am in my safe place, he can't bother me. Ok, deep breath and—

"Do you want to get this 'showing you around' crap outta the way?"

He pushes himself away from the counter and walks up to me. "The sooner I get to spend time with you, ma belle, the better." He purrs at me.

I look around quickly to make sure no one heard this. PLEASE don't let anyone have heard. "Shut-up, someone's going to hear you!" I tell him quietly.

I hear him mutter something about a secret love affair as he follows me out of the kitchen and out into the empty hall. Stopping there, I turn back to him.

"Ok, that was the kitchen—this is a hall," I tell him as if he's a five year old, "Down the hall there is a dining room and across from that-"

He holds his hands up as he interrupts me. "Wait a second—I will never remember that. I think you're going to have to show me."

I stare at him. "Are you serious? I have to show you every room in the mansion?"

"Yes." Just as he speaks, a loud clap a thunder sounded out around us and the hall was lights up with the flash from lightening.

Well, that was fitting.

…

An hour later, after showing him the whole of the downstairs, I was already tired of him, but I was actually proud of myself; I had kept my cool. Though he hadn't flirted as much, he still had a lot of other annoying personality traits.

Like the way he would keep me in one room for so long, pretending to be extremely interested in a painting or a window or a table, but when I said something about leaving him be, suddenly he wanted to go to the next room. And also, the way I could feel his eyes on me, constantly, but when I glanced over at him, he was looking the other direction and then pretends to catch me looking at him.

As we trudge up the stairs, I make sure to stay next to him rather than in front of him. I had caught him looking at my behind more than I liked today.

I try to block him out as he starts talking about making me dinner, but his voice seemes to get louder.

"No, Gambit, you're not makin me dinner. Ever."

"Enough with that, now, call me Remy. And I am going to make you dinner. Or would you just like some dessert?" He added suggestively.

I gasp and Gambit—or Remy—looks over at me. "You almost said something not perverted! You should be proud of yourself." I clap him on the back just as we make it to the landing.

He smirks at my remark and turns down a different path than the one I had planned on taking him.

"That's the girl's bedrooms; you don't need to go down there!" I tell him, but I'm sure that I'm going to be ignored.

Of course I turned out to be right in my assumption—Gambit—I mean Remy kept walking. Oh no—

I walk after him. "Don't go in my room."

He turns to face me as he keeps walking backwards. "But I'm going to need to know my way to your bedroom, don't you think?"

"Um, NO!"

I figure it must have been the storm outside that caused something—I'm pretty sure it was a tree branch—to smack into the window next to me, distracting me long enough for Gam—Remy to slip into my room.

Groaning in frustration, I follow after him. When I enter, I find him searching through my underwear drawer.

Clenching my fists tightly, I march over to him and jerk my panties out of his hand. "WHAT are you doing?"

"You should buy more red. I like red."

Glaring at him, I throw the panties back into the drawer and slam it closed, barely missing his fingers.

"Get out of my room!" I tell him just as he jumps on my bed, rolls over, and lands on his feet on the other side.

"But that's ok, you don't have to buy more…I'd still like you even if you didn't have any clothes on at all."

I glare in reply to his mischievous grin.

Dingbat—I mean Gambit—I mean Remy looked my bed over. "So this is where Rogue sleeps…And also where I'll be sleeping, soon enough."

"And also where you'll be murdered if you don't get out of here!" I snap at him.

Completely ignoring me, he jumps onto the bed again and starts trying out different sleeping positions. Rubbing my temples, I head to the bathroom, all the while begging God for mercy. Slamming the door shut behind me, I glare at my own reflection while taking a few aspirin to ease my headache.

Ok, just another hour…At least that's what I was hoping for. The downstairs took an hour, so the upstairs should take the same amount of time, right? OH HELL, I forgot our abnormally large basement. The jet hanger, the danger room, all that crap.

After taking a moment to steady myself, I finally step out of the bathroom, rubbing my eyes.

After a moment, I look over to see Remy still stretched out on my bed, reading my journal.

You know that saying, So mad I could see red? Well it's true. When you're mad, and I'm talkin mad, you really do see red. And also little red spots.

Screeching in fury, I dive at him. Obviously, he isn't expecting this, and the book is knocked out of his hands and onto the floor. I can't help myself; I take a swing at him and would have hit him if he hadn't blocked it. He reaches up, grabs me, and rolls me over onto my back and attempts to pin me down.

"Hey, you're pretty when you're mad, you know that?" He asks as I struggle against him.

This only infuriates me further and I bring my knee up to his gut.

"Oof!" He rolls off of me and onto his back.

Figuring he hasn't had enough, I reach over and shove him off of the bed.

"Ow." He says from the floor.

I bend across the bed and grab the journal from the floor next to him, smacking him on the leg with it before bringing it back up. Just as I'm about to put it back into my drawer, I do a double take.

Uh-oh. Oh hell.

Well…I guess I made a mistake…

The journal that I'm holding is the one that I bought to replace the journal that I'm currently writing in. It only had two blank pages left and I had figured yesterday at the mall that I should just go ahead and buy a new one. Then when I had gotten home, I had thrown it onto my desk. I quickly flip through the book that I now held to find that yes, every page was blank.

I stare at it, appalled before racing around the bed to Remy.

"Remy, are you ok?" I drop to my knees next to him.

He shakes his head slowly. "No," he gasps, "I…I think you broke a rib."

I gape at him. "What? Are you serious? Oh…I'm so sorry!"

He shakes his head again. "No, its ok, I like a girl who can fight."

I sigh. "Maybe I should go get some help…"

"No, no, what you should do is come real close and-"

I stare at him. "Your rib isn't broken, is it?"

He stops and stares back at me for a moment. "No."

I smack him upside the head before getting back to my feet and stomping to the door.

"You know, you are really, really, really annoying!" I tell him angrily as I jerk the door open, "Seriously, I don't know how you have gone this far without someone trying to murder you."

He easily hops to his feet and follows me out into the hall. "Well, I have come close a few times."

I decide to ignore that.

"Ok, well I am not showing you the girl's bedrooms, or the boy's—the only other thing up here is the library, but I'm sure you don't really want-"

He cut me off. "I would love to see the library."

Keep my cool, keep my cool, keep my cool, keep my cool…I can do this, I know I can. I am a strong woman. At least that's what I keep telling myself as I walk to the library and ignore whatever he is saying to me. Just another hour, that's all I've got left.

The library is usually empty on the weekends, but today with the storm, I don't know what to expect. Remy strolls on in past me as I peak in. Somehow while I had been showing him around today I had managed to avoid being in the same room for too long with anyone else. It's not that I don't want to see anyone else; it's more because I don't want any of them to hear Remy's continuous flirting.

I really don't want to think of what they would say about that.

Relieved when I don't immediately spot anyone, I silently follow Remy inside as he begins wandering around. As we walk along one of the rows of shelves, I continue to ignore whatever he's saying to me again. It's really been the only thing that's gotten me through the day.

"You're not listening are you?"

And with that, I'm brought back to the present.

I shake my head at him. "I think it's best if I just don't listen to you anymore."

"Why?" He stops walking in favor of leaning back against a shelf and focusing on me.

Though I just want to get this over with, I stop also and turn to face him. "Because you-" I try to think of a way to say it differently than I already have, "you say things you shouldn't. You do things you shouldn't, and you can't take no for an answer."

He looked like he was about to respond when I cut him off.

"No, let me rephrase. You can't seem to understand that it isn't going to happen. That it's physically impossible for it to happen. That there is no way that it can ever happen."

He looks at me with a different kind of expression than I've ever seen him use before. What was that? Oh…it's serious. Oh no…

"Rogue-"

But before he begins he's interrupted by the appearance of Jean and Kitty. Judging by the school books that Kitty is holding in her arms, I figure she must have opted to do her homework which was another odd occurrence on top of all the other odd things that everyone had been doing lately. I can't figure why Jean was with her.

But forgetting why they were there—I sure was glad to see them. See, serious conversations weren't really my thing, and I had gotten the feeling that was where Remy had us headed.

"Hey Rogue," Kitty says happily. "Remy." She acknowledges him with a nod that he returns. "You two having fun?"

What to say to that? No, I wasn't having fun, but I couldn't say it had been a boring day.

Suddenly Remy didn't look so serious anymore. A smirk came over his face as he spoke. "I can't speak for Rogue, but I'm having a great time. So far we've explored her bedroom, looked at her panties and rolled around on her bed." As the two girls gaped at him, he added as if in after thought, "that was my favorite part of the day."

The blush that came over my face and neck was almost painful. And amazingly, like the idiot I am, the only thing I could think to say to this was:

"We didn't ROLL, we wrestled!"

This of course did nothing to help the situation. Judging by the grin on his face, Remy seemed to enjoy my response, Kitty gawked at us, Jean wasn't gaping anymore, but her eyes were round as saucers, and I was left stuttering a defense for the stupid thing I had just said.

"I-I mean—we uh—I was trying to hurt him! He read my journal!"

Remy shook his head and leaned a little towards Jean and Kitty. "She's lying—she just wanted to get me on my back."

As my blush worsened I heard Kitty giggle. Oh great, now people were getting amusement from my embarrassment.

"Shut up swamp rat!" I clench my fists at my side, ready to take a swing at him. Again.

"What about the panties thing?"

I turn to Jean as she asks this embarrassing question. But Remy jumps to answer this before I get the chance.

"Rogue couldn't help herself."

My mouth drops open in horror at this. "WHAT? I could—I COULD help myself!" I yell at Kitty and Jean. "He just ran in and started grabbing them!" Their eyes got wide at this so I added quickly, "Out of my drawer."

They both blinked at me. I could understand that all of this was a lot to take in so quickly. The way we were acting, Remy and I probably looked like we had been smoking something. Or else like he was extremely horny. Which I was sure he was. Ok, and that's a subject to never think about again.

…Where was I?

Oh yeah.

I glance over at stupid to find him shaking his head at Kitty and Jean as if to tell them that I was lying. Not thinking about it, I deliver a swift kick to his shin. Or at least I tried to kick his shin. Instead, he jumped out of the way and my oncoming foot ended up kicking the shelf behind him.

My mouth formed an O shape as I tried to take in the pain in my big toe. Why. Me.

I stumble backwards but am caught by Remy a.k.a. the one who had caused my pain in the first place.

Wow, who knew hitting your toe while it was still in your shoe could hurt so badly? Of course, I had kicked the shelf pretty hard since I had been aiming for Remy whom I really wanted to hurt right now.

Jean and Kitty rushed forward asking if I was ok, my toe was screaming in pain and still through all of this, I noticed Remy's arms snaking their way around my waist. Was he seriously trying to feel me up while I was in pain? Of course. To anyone else it would look like he was just helping me stand up, but after having that look into his head, I knew him too well.

The touch was uncomfortable for me, probably because I hadn't been touched so much in a very long time.

"Rogue, are you ok? You didn't break it, did you?"

The feel of Remy's breath, hot on my neck, made it hard for me to concentrate on what Jean was saying. I shake my head slowly.

"No…No, I'm ok, really, don't freak out."

My toe still hurt, but this was making me nervous. He was close, too close. His whole torso was pressed into my back, his arms around me, the smell coming off of him was a mixture of leather and apples and—I had to get away.

I pulled away from him, and he let me go—I had half expected him to hold onto me. Gingerly stepping on my foot again, I turned to the three of them.

"I'm ok, thanks…but I'm gonna go lay down if you don't mind."

Hurting my foot actually gave me an excuse to get out of showing Remy around. At least something good came out of hurting myself. After declining Jean's offer to help me to my room, I limped out of the library, all the while trying to forget how much I liked the smell of…apples.