Remy looked properly abashed, but not enough so for Storm's liking.
"Sorry I blew up your cafeteria, Stormy." He mumbled into his chest, looking down at the ground like a scorned puppy. He really should have angled down his face more because Ororo could still see his grin.
"Don't call me 'Stormy'. You're going to clean the entire cafeteria!" She snapped and as she was about to say something else when fourteen little bodies came crashing into her office. Well, technically, it was only one body, replicated fourteen times.
"Mr. Gambit!" Jamie wailed. "I need help! Me and Rahne keep trying the cool flip you did and I keep falling. And Miss Rogue was trying to help, but Rahne was there and she kept laughing at me when I fell." He stomped his feet.
"Jamie," Storm spoke. "Mr. Gambit can't come help you right now. He's in a lot of trouble for blowing up the cafeteria and ruining my favorite shirt."
"Aw, come on," Jamie whined. All of them. In unison. "Pleeeeeeee-"
Remy and Ororo exchanged looks.
"eeeeeeeeeeee-"
"He's gotta run out of air sometime."
"eeeeeeeeeeee-"
"Or maybe not…"
"eeeeeeeeeeeee-"
"Good lord! Before the boy passes out, Stormy!"
"eeee-"
"Fine!" Ororo put her fingers to her temples, wondering how many bottles of asprin it would take to make the trains of 'eeee' go away. Jamie leaped up in the air with excitement and started dragging Remy out the door. The spare Jamies disappeared. "This doesn't mean you're off the hook!" She called after them. "I'll think of something!"
Remy laughed and waved back at her as the surprisingly strong force of Jamie dragged him forward.
"I think she's mad at me." Jamie said.
"Dis Rahne girl of yours?" Remy asked.
"Yeah." Jamie nodded like a bobble head, leading him forward through the complicated maze of hallways to where Remy was assuming Rahne and Rogue were. "She won't talk to me anymore. She keeps trying to avoid me and I don't know why." He sounded very frustrated. "I thought she liked me. She was holding my hand yesterday. But, now, she won't even be in the same room as me."
Remy wasn't one to not take affairs of the heart seriously. Love was a serious game. A gamble. Hell, if eight-year-olds were mature enough to try and sort out the damn complicated puzzle that came with it, physically mature people could take a stab at it now and again.
Remy was an expert on creating love. Flirting. He was good with sparks.
Not so much with the long term stuff.
And he hoped to God that eight-year-old's weren't looking for 'sparks'.
He involuntarily grimaced.
"Are you alright?" Jamie asked.
"Yeah," Remy tried to cover up his gag with a smile.
"You are going to help me get her to be my girlfriend still, right?" Jamie looked up at him with pitiful eyes.
"O'course, petit." Remy assured him as he was dragged into another room. There were several things different about this room compared to the other rooms he had just been led through. First, it was much larger, not only in volume but the scant furniture left a lot of floor space, and it was much larger in appearance as well. Second, there were people in this one.
Rogue laughed slightly as she bent over the collapsed form of Rahne.
"Sweetie, you gotta keep your arms stiffer when you try to stand on them." She helped up the smaller girl. "And you're trying to hard to avoid the ground. The ground's gonna come to meet ya one way or another, the trick is to be prepared for it."
Remy liked the way the light from the window was caught in the white bits of her hair when she bent over and the unconscious curve of her lips as she watched Rahne attempt a crude gymnastic move.
"Miss Rogue!" Jamie made their presence known a great deal sooner than Remy would have liked. "I brought Mr. Gambit to come help!"
Rogue looked up, startled.
"He promised me earlier that he'd help me, so I went and got him." Jamie puffed up his chest, obviously impressed with his own initiative. He didn't seem to notice that Rogue hadn't acknowledge him yet. Her pure green eyes were stuck in Remy's tainted black ones.
"Are y' alright, chere?" Remy moved forward to put a hand on her shoulder.
She pulled away jerkily.
"Don't touch me." She backed up. "Please, just stay away." He could see the cold barrier of tears in her eyes as she groped the wall behind her for a door knob. She found it and tore out of the room.
Remy was about to follow her when there was a sharp pain in his knee.
GODDAMMIT.
"Meanie." Rahne spat, kicking him a second time for good measure before shooting Jamie a glare and stalking out after Rogue. The urge to strangle her, however, stayed with Remy.
Jamie stomped his feet. "You see! She won't even talk to me!"
"Here's what you gotta do." Remy turned to him, eyes still on the door. "Find out what the hell the femme is mad about. Do not let her try an' shake y' just because she's stubborn. She was holding your hand yesterday, that's gotta count for something, right?"
It took a few moments for Jamie to recover from the use of 'hell' in a daily sentence. "Alrigh-"
"Gambit!" Kitty fell through the wall, breathing heavily with a bright smile on her face and confusion in her eyes. "Have you seen Rogue? Bobby just woke up and he asked for her."
Without thinking, Remy pointed out the door Rogue had just taken off through.
"Thanks! You're, like, the best! She's totally gonna flip when he asks her out again!" She laughed before dashing out of the door.
Jamie and Remy stood alone in the room for a few minutes.
"Also." Remy added. "If y' ever get a chance to kill a handsy bastard that's trying to steal your woman and settle for breaking his nose in stead, just go the extra mile and worry about hiding the body later."
