Chapter 34: Interruption

They woke, however, to banging on their door. Well, Remy did. He'd won the coin-toss last night, which meant Rogue was only wearing gloves and a pair of the knee socks he loved so much. He'd picked them too: honeycomb background with little buzzing bees. It also meant the sweet curve of her ass, the one he'd licked his way up last night while she'd splayed face down on the bed and begged him to quit playing, was bare except for his fully gloved hand curled against gold skin.

When the knocking stopped there was the smell of burning and then the door shoved open, despite having once been locked. Remy reacted on instinct. His free hand, in its usual semi-covered and semi-not state, reached for a deck of cards on the nightstand. The charge was passing to the slim soon-to-be-bomb at the same time he was yanking a cover over Rogue, still sound asleep and unaware of the intruder.

"Don't," Scott's voice clipped, stalling Remy's throw though the card glowed. So did his gaze when it lifted to Scott's face. "We've got a problem. Problems. We need you both. Kitchen." Cyclops paused, perhaps expecting Remy to explain or maybe just to reabsorb the charge from the card in his hand. "Ten minutes, Gambit."

The door banging on Scott's departure finally stirred the warm, limp mass of woman on top of him. Remy absorbed the charge and slid both arms around Rogue. Damn it. "Morning, catin." Brushing his mouth over the top of her head, Remy waited for her reaction. Waking up naked and sex-sore in his arms was not an average morning; Rogue was too unpredictable for him to assume that the playful, sensual, unapologetic lover from last night wouldn't retreat this morning.

"Too early." Hiking the sheet he'd drawn to her waist even higher, Rogue nuzzled into his shoulder as if she could burrow in and avoid waking.

Wishing they could do just that, Remy stroked a hand under the sheet and curled his fingers where they'd rested in sleep. Absently kneading muscles, putting off leaving the knot of their bodies, Remy didn't tell her about their morning visitor.

Surprisingly, Rogue turned liquid, her lean and too often tense body relaxing. Bright eyes lifted, focused on his lips.

"Anna Marie," sighed. She was irresistible. He angled his head as she pushed up, their mouths meeting open and wet, familiar and exciting. The lithe fighter was unabashed in the quick ignition of desire. Rogue rubbed against him, hips tipping into his hard thigh, bare breasts skimming his cotton-covered chest.

With extreme regret, Remy gentled the kiss and his grip.

Rogue, smirking, peered down at him. "Do I have to seduce you again?" The Southern drawl drug straight down his spine. "Need to reassure you that we can absolutely have morning sex?" She moved her thigh, gently brushing against evidence that he was more than capable of partaking. "You're ready and I'm not as fragile as you seem t'think." Teeth scraped his jaw in a light bite before that she offered him a hooded look and a smile he'd never seen before, teasing and sultry, and hoped to see again and again in the future. "Who knew Remy Etienne LeBeau would need so much coddling?"

Remy Etienne LeBeau was in love with this sassy, strong mischief-maker. He smiled, dopily, at her for a minute. Long enough that she squirmed and her eyes narrowed. Eventually, she pinched him. "Ow!"

"You are alive in there. What the hell, Remy?"

He would've rubbed his arm where she pinched but that would mean letting go of her and he had no intention of doing that yet. "You're beautiful, Anna Marie. Hard to stop starin'. Even if you are mean as a snake and twice as likely t'bite." She still looked suspicious. Remy nipped her lower lip , slid his tongue against the sensitive skin until she began to go lax again. "I want nothin' more than to spend the rest of the day in bed with you, catin, but we been summoned."

Rogue was on the verge of trying to convince him otherwise, an experience he was eager to have, when the word 'summoned' clicked. "When? Who? What?"

Ah, there was his sleep-muddled femme. She pushed away, sliding off of him and to her knees in the tangle of sheets. As he followed from his prone position, Remy lifted a hand up to cup a sleep-flushed cheek. "Scott. Knocked on the door." And burst in to see her lying naked on top of him, but Gambit figured it was better to keep that part to his ownself. "We got, oh, 'bout five minutes to get our asses to a meetin'."

"Our naked asses!" The back of her hand swatted his arm. "Remy, why didn't you say somethin' sooner?"

The man in question looked at her, mouth curving in a slow smile that had dazzled more than one woman. Rogue included. "Your ass is naked and you askin' why I ain't tellin' you to get dressed?" Color washed along her chest, up her neck. He wanted to follow its ascent with his tongue, wanted to catch her up and tell her things she probably didn't want to hear.

"You're-you-" but she faltered in her search for an appropriate insult. Remy's laughter, loud and satisfied, chased her from the bed. Rogue was not fighting a smile, she refused to be, when she threw a pillow at his hard head. "Get up, Cajun. We're down to four minutes."

But she didn't win the fight on amusement for long. They were laughing as they raced down the hall, Remy putting his hands in inappropriate for public places every step of the way. She'd just swatted him from a part of her body that very much wanted to be touched when they rushed through the door, grinning at each other with a camaraderie intensified by their new intimacy.

The silence in the room, however, had both their expressions blanking. Neither noticed that when faced with the grim wall of their colleagues and friends they stood straighter and moved closer together, standing shoulder to shoulder, a unit.

Ingrained habit had the N'awlins thief assessing the room with a swift glance. The doc looked strangely small. The newest X-Men were silent, collected at a table with eyes big. Ororo and Scott gave nothing away, still and silent. Logan looked like he wanted to eat someone for breakfast and not in the usual way. Forge and Shane both looked particularly grim. He took this in, along with a hint of nerves and fear, in less than a second.

Just as Gambit started to ask for an explanation, Logan, all but vibrating, snarled, "The inhibitor collar gets stolen while you're out partyin' and you think it's funny, Gumbo?"

"I hadn't told him," Scott defended, practically on top of Remy's snapped, "What? When?"

Logan pushed away from the counter. "You told him to get his ass—"

"I didn't tell him how serious—"

"—down here, didn't you? Don't matter if he knows why. He's just a —"

"—because he was asleep. I thought it best— "

"Assez!" Remy's voice rang out, commanding and too serious to be ignored. Scott scowled behind his aviators. Logan growled. At least they stopped arguing. "Moira. When did the collar disappear?"

"Last night. Sometime between three and four am." The doctor's brogue was pronounced.

"We need to lock down, find out if anyone is missing. Forge, I want you to—"

"Gambit." Moira's soft voice, sounding defeated, interrupted.

"I'll get it back, Doc." He was prepared to soothe her while moving his team to action. "This was my system. My fault. I will make it right."

"It wasn't." Gambit began his protest, but Moira held up her hand. "It wasn't your fault. It was mine. Lydia took the collar."

Remy bit off a curse in French. Rogue's hand touched his to get his attention. "Lydia?"

Only Rogue could make him want to smile in the midst of a disaster. And what someone could do with that collar, if they could replicate it, would be disastrous for the mutant community. "The chef."

"Your chef?" He lifted a brow and her cheeks warmed. She probably ought to have learned the woman's name. Although she was now completely certain why she hadn't wanted to remember it: She hadn't wanted to imagine Remy whispering it while he touched her, moaning it while she touched him.

"Still don't mean it is your fault, Moira."

Moira's eyes sharpened and so did her voice. She was rumpled but flinty when she came to her feet. "I trusted her with information you told me she shouldn't have. With access to my private office. I trusted her completely."

Rogue, surprising herself, spoke up. "That still don't make it your fault. Or Gambit's. It's just hers." Anna Marie paused, frowning, recalling the chef lurking near Gambit's room not so long ago. "And probably somethin' she's been plannin' for a long time. Could even by why she slept with —" Remy's hand bumped hers, then tangled their fingers. Laughing at this moment would be highly inappropriate. "There's no point talkin' blame when it wastes time we could be usin' to track her down."

"Unfortunately, we can't all stay and help." Ororo's cultured, calm tones further settled the room. "We've had word from Australia."

Rogue was still playing catch up as she and Remy left the kitchen to pack. "This place in Australia, it was set up for two mutant kids to surf?"

Remy huffed a laugh. "Close enough, chere. And there's two mutants there, meant t'keep 'em safe, but things been going sideways for a while. Contacted de Professor a few weeks ago to see if maybe he could spare some help if they couldn't get it under control."

Rogue nodded. "And something happened?"

"They spotted someone dat means trouble 'bout four days ago." He held the door to their room open as she passed through. "Yesterday, dat someone tried t'kill one of them kids."

In the meeting the conversation about Australia had been abbreviated. Rogue didn't need the full details, though, as she was on Team Collar. They divided to pack and, since most of Remy's things were still in his room, it stalled her questions.

But they did still share the bathroom and bumped in there a few minutes later.

Rogue's cheeks flared with heat. "I was going to shower…" Obviously. She'd brought in clothes and had been snagging a towel when he walked in. Of course, he'd probably been thinking the same thing. On the road, it was anyone's guess where they'd be staying or when they'd get a chance to clean up.

Remy looked from Rogue to the glassed-in shower, more than big enough for two. "Go on." He jerked his chin towards the shower. "I need t'make a call."

"Thanks, sugar." Gloved fingers tugged on the edge of his tee in lieu of a kiss. No matter how careful they'd been, she'd taken a lot out of him the night before. "Thought Forge and the others were workin' on trackin' her movements while we got ready?"

"They are." Remy scooped a loose curl behind her ear, a leather covered thumb lingering on the slope of her cheekbone. "I need to tell someone I'm leavin' Scotland."

Rogue's hand fell away from his shirt. "You need t'tell a woman you're leavin' Scotland." Her heart seemed to have sprouted hummingbird wings.

"Yes." Reading her, the tangle of emotion swirled darkly into him.

"A woman you sleep with?"

"I sleep with you every night." He needed her to remember that. She didn't respond. Remy scrubbed a hand over his jaw, then skimmed agile fingers through his still sleep tumbled hair. "Yes, Rogue. A woman I have slept with, a woman I have had sex with. I consider her a friend."

It should have been reassuring, in a way. She knew what he did and why he did it. Not only had she asked, early on, why he fucked strangers but his working with her had pushed him into sleeping with people because she, well. They both knew what her skin did. "You see her every time you go to the mainland?"

"Not every time, no." Remy thought his pop chock looked pale, her eyes too big, but he finished with the full truth. "But every week, yeah. " The quiet became brittle. It seemed as if they were cracking like dropped glass.

"And you call her? From here? Just, just t'talk?" Rogue's husky voice, rougher this morning for the long night, carefully placed each word, tiles on a game board.

Remy didn't want to take his turn. "Anna Marie, please, don't do this."

"I'm just tryin' to figure it out." Tension tightened between them. "You sleep with her, have sex with her, call her just t'talk. You have meals with her, I'm guessin', and you gotta tell her when you go outta town. Sounds like a relationship t'me. Maybe not a conventional one, but…" Strong shoulders shrugged, fingers tugging sleeves over her hands.

Remy looked at the bees wiggling along her toes. A muscle jumped in his jaw. Eventually, the thief settled the bright red of his gaze on her still muddled ones. She hadn't quite slept him off. "Anna Marie. It ain't a relationship, not like you mean. She's just a friend."

But Anna chewed on her lip, considering the phrase. "I'm just a friend that you used t'call every night. I'm just a friend you sleep with. Just a friend you fu—"

"Fuck that, Anna Marie." The Cajun's temper finally ignited, a muscle tightening in his shadowed jaw as he overlapped her. "I ain't got time for this and neither do you." Gambit moved into her space, backed her up against the counter and trapped her with a hand gripping the lip of it on either side of her waist.

"But let's be real clear, yeah?" Remy slanted his mouth near hers, close enough to kiss but instead his breath washed her lips with each angry word. "You asked me to skip the part where we sort out who we are to each other. You knew I went every week to fuck you out of my system.

"Cass is a friend. A friend I been screwing. If you wanna know if I plan t'sleep with her again, ask the damn question. You, chere, the one tryin' to avoid layin it out. Me? I told you and told you but you ain't been listenin'. If you think I'd fuck around on my fuckin' best friend, the l'amour de—" Remy bit the words off. Rogue's French was unreliable, but he didn't need that kind of confession in the middle of what was already a mess. "Dat's what you think of me maybe we got bigger problems."

Remy shoved away from Rogue, from the counter, from the wide green eyes still laced with red and black. The door slammed behind him while Anna Marie stared silently after his retreating back.

Author's Note: First of all, thank you all so much for the kind words on the last chapter. I was Very Nervous about posting it, but I figured we all (Rogue and Remy included) deserved a pay off for the tension that left them, for once and however briefly, thoroughly satisfied. As for where they are now...well, like many of you said, they just aren't the kind to have calm waters!

On Updates: I couldn't look at this chapter anymore. I hope you liked it (though I'm sure you want to kick both of them). As those of you who have been around for awhile have experienced, I will binge update and then not update for a month. I really don't know if this is the last of the quick updates (though, probably it is). I have one more chapter with a rough (very rough) draft but it is setting up some action so it's important I get it right. I hope you keep reading and commenting and enjoying!