Remy leaned on his bō staff as he attempted to catch his breath. The rest of the team was busy wrapping up their parts in the fight, so he could take a moment to be, well, vulnerable. In the face of his nigh on invulnerable teammates, he didn't like showing his own frailty. His side screamed at him as he inhaled deeply. Letting out the breath in an equally painful rush, he cautiously ran his fingers along his side to the epicentre of the pain and probed the tender area. When he finally peeled out of his uniform for the night, he knew he'd find a patchwork of deep bruising splashed across his side and, if he was to take an educated guess from the piercing pain, there would be a few injured ribs to add to his collection of injuries. Forcing himself to breathe normally, he wasn't quite quick enough to hide the resulting wince before Rogue turned his way.

Striding over the rubble from several demolished buildings, Rogue traversed the space between them like she was crossing nothing more than a pebble strewn path. When she reached him, she stopped close enough that if he reached out a hand, he'd touch her. It was all he could do to hold back and keep from closing the remaining distance. There were too many potential witnesses around for her to allow that and she'd rebuff his attempts if he tried. He hurt too much to be swatted away.

Slipping into an easy nonchalance, Gambit forced himself to ignore the pain as he straightened. By the time he met her eyes, his easy was grin back in place. She glanced over her shoulder, checking to make certain the rest of the team was distracted before returning the grin. Hers lit up her face like the sun lit the sky. He lived for these moments. The moments when the small cracks in her hardened exterior revealed a bit of the inner softness she hid away from everybody else.

Rogue studied him, her sharp gaze peeling away the lies. "You okay, sugah?"

"Never better now dat you're here, chère," he intoned, unable to hide the slight wheeze that accompanied the words.

She raised a skeptical eyebrow, not buying his bull for even a minute. Slipping her gloved hand between his jacket and uniform, she ran her fingers along his side in a perfunctory manner, checking for injury and nothing more. When she reached the bruising, he jerked back sharply and grunted. Gently, she withdrew her hand. "And is that what Hank will say when he examines your ribs, Cajun?"

"Non," he answered petulantly. Cautiously he leaned on his staff, using it to help make his way through the boulder-sized rubble. Sometimes it just didn't seem fair. While Gambit was quick on his feet and had a knack for avoiding most of the direct blows that should have laid him low, he was keenly aware of just how mortal he was. He was never quite certain how much of his uncanny streak of luck was due to his mutant abilities and how much was simply derived from the innate and learned skills needed to survive first as a wily street rat, then as an adopted member of the Thieve's Guild. Not to mention the years he spent on his own before joining up with the X-men. In any case, luck could only protect him for so long. Unlike his teammates, his skin didn't turn to metal or ice, he didn't have super strength, and he didn't heal any quicker than the average person.

Rogue surveyed the rubble strewn street and the massive bodies of their downed opponents. It wasn't as if they were hard to miss. Each of the monstrosities were at least three times larger than Colossus. And now, all that remained of the six bio-mechanical constructs were their half-buried, twisted, and smouldering remains.

This hadn't exactly been a sanctioned mission. Gambit and the others had simply been in the area when the creatures escaped from a nearby lab and started wrecking havoc. By the time the team had arrived on site, a wide swatch of downtown had already been destroyed. With innocent lives in danger, it wasn't like the X-men could stand by and watch it happen. Gambit stared at the impressive amount of rubble surrounding them. The X-men definitely didn't do subtle.

"Which one got ya?" Rogue scuffed her toe along a slab of concrete displaced onto its side during the recent upheaval.

"I was fightin' the red one wit' de fire when the blue one decided to take a swat at me." Gambit fingered the blackened hole in the sleeve of his duster. The exposed skin on his shoulder glowed a rosy pink and small blisters pebbled the flesh where the heat had been most intense.

Her eyes flashed as she found both the red and blue constructs lying in a nearby heap. Charred streaks from Gambit's kinetically charged cards peppered both bodies. His attacks had torn through the grafted flesh and bit into their mechanical frames. From the look Rogue was giving them, Gambit was certain that if they so much as twitched, she would tear them apart with her gloved hands. A touch of satisfaction and a heaping of guilt warred at his insides in a jumble of pain which tore at his conscious. His belle femme cared for him—or, at least about his general well-being—but the guilt which continuously nagged at the back of his skull grew more insistent and persistently chided that he didn't deserve her sympathy.

Rogue kicked the blue construct, lodging it on its side with the force of her blow. A charred starburst pattern marred Blue's chest where Gambit had planted the charged end of his bō staff and toppled the creature with the resulting explosion.

"Now wasn' it mighty considerate of the mad scientist to colour code them. Do you think he was plannin' on a field test today?" she muttered.

"If he was, doesn' appear it was all dat successful." Gambit smirked as he spied Rogue's opponent from among the wreckage. It was nothing more than a tangled mess of broken and bent orange limbs. A crater the size of her fist smouldered at the centre of its chest. His own punches hadn't left a mark on the monstrosities. What did it say about him that the demonstration of her strength sent a pang of desire straight through his body? He swallowed back the cheeky, appreciative comment that would send her running away from him and back to the relative safety of being among the rest of the team.

"Why wasn' Iceman fightin' the red one?" Rogue rocked back on her heels and searched for Bobby. He was traveling by ice bridge over the carnage as he extinguished the last of the remaining fires flickering among the wreckage. While Red's main target had been Gambit's head, the agile thief had been too quick for most of the creature's fiery bolts. The one that had finally found his shoulder had originally been intended for his head.

Gambit wanted to shrug, but his unburnt shoulder was on the same side as his injured ribs and the gesture didn't seem worth the pain. "Suppose it was 'cause he was fightin' de yellow one with de sonics."

Rogue frowned. "Wolverine?"

"Wolvie was busy dealin' with de purple one." He pointed his bō at Wolverine who was using his adamantium claws to crack through its metallic skull like a tin can in order to access the CPU.

"So, while Ah was busy with the orange one and Colossus was taking on the green one…" Rogue stepped in close and jabbed a finger at his chest. Her scowl deepened into one that spoke as much of concern as it did of anger. "Why were you the one takin' on two of 'em all by your lonesome, swamp rat?"

This time Gambit did shrug despite the pain. "You were all occupied. 'Sides, dis isn' de first time I've taken on superior numbers and lived t' tell de tale."

"You shouldn' have to Gambit." She leaned in close, her forehead almost, but definitely not, touching his. Though her voice was lowered to a strained whisper, it was laced with the sweetness of honey. Her initial swell of anger had bled out, leaving only concern in its wake. "Ah could have helped."

He swallowed back the lump of emotion that threatened to choke his words. "I'll live chère. I've had worse."

With the back of his glove covered fingers, Gambit reached to brush at the smudge of dirt and concrete dust from Rogue's cheek. Standing perfectly still, her breath quickened as his hand slowly neared her face. It was a sign of the progress they had made that she no longer immediately shied away from him when he moved towards her.

Before he could make contact, Wolverine's growl snapped across the distance. "Gumbo, what do ya think you're doing?"

At the reminder that they weren't alone, the spell was broken. Rogue jerked away from Gambit like he'd been about to zap her with one of his charges instead of caressing her cheek. He pulled his hand back and ran it through his disheveled hair as though that had been his only intention in the first place. The moment was gone. In a split second, her armour was firmly back in place. She tugged her jacket tight around her and held in whatever else she might have said.

With a grunt, Wolverine stalked across the rubble like he was on a one man mission to protect Rogue from the wily Cajun.

Gambit resisted the urge to sigh as he stepped away from Rogue, leaving a respectable distance between them. He collapsed his staff and pocketed it in his duster. Keeping his spine straight and his hands in his pocket, Gambit gave a lazy grin like he hadn't a care in the world. He wasn't about to let either of them know just how disappointed he was by the interruption. "Not a t'ing, homme. Jus' tellin' the petite I'd live."

Rogue's lips pulled into a tight line as he dismissed the severity of his injuries. With a balled fist planted against the curve of her hip and her chin thrust out in defiance, she spun to face Wolverine. "Gambit's been injured. What's the status of the rest of the team?"

"They'll live." Wolverine's uniform had been slashed by his opponent's blade. Blood stained the edges of each gash, but the skin underneath had already knit back together without leaving even the trace of a scar. Bobby and Piotr, still in their respective ice and metal forms, made their way towards their gathered teammates. With the obvious exception of Gambit, none of the others had any visible injuries.

Wolverine sniffed the air and narrowed his eyes. His head cocked to the side as he heard something the rest of them couldn't. "We need to leave," he growled.

The rest of the team didn't need to wait for the sirens before taking off in the direction of the Blackbird. They'd landed the jet on the outskirts of the city and it would be quite the scramble to get across town before the authorities arrived. Despite the team's heroics, it was likely there would be no distinction made between the X-men and the bio-mechanical menaces. It was time for the better part of valour and to make their escape.

Iceman, Colossus, and Wolverine rapidly disappeared out of sight. Gambit loped after Rogue for a few steps before his body painfully reminded him that he wasn't in any sort of shape to be running. He slowed to a hurried hobble as Rogue easily scaled the remains of a former office building.

When she realised Gambit was no longer at her side, Rogue paused, waiting for him at the apex. In the not so far distance, sirens howled. The cacophony echoed off the remaining buildings and up the street in their direction.

A fire sparked in her green eyes as she egged him on with a few well placed jibes and her familiar snarky banter. "Thought ya said you were fine, Cajun. You gonna let a few cracked ribs prove ya wrong? Gotta hurry if we want to beat the others."

"And how, chère, will we manage dat?" Gambit panted.

As much as he didn't want to admit defeat, he wasn't certain it was possible for him to make it from the wreckage before the authorities arrive, let alone make it to the Blackbird before the others. Their vehicle, with its frame twisted and bent to the point where it'd never drive again, laid under a pile of rubbish. They weren't going to leave that way. He had no doubt he could get out of there eventually, but he wouldn't be able to do it quickly. Or, easily.

"Fly," she stated as though it was the most natural thing in the world. For her, he supposed, it was.

"Have fun wit' dat," he muttered darkly.

"Ah ain't leavin' you behind." Rogue skidded down the side of the building and returned to his side. Before he could argue, she picked him up like he weighed no more than a stripling and levitated both of them off the ground.

"Hey—" Gambit bit back his protest as she secured her hold on him. She placed one arm around his back, the other under his legs. He wrapped an arm around her neck and savoured the delicious sensation of his covered arm resting against the sliver of bare skin between her collar and hair. A shiver ran up her spine and into him.

"Quit fidgetin'," she scolded. With a determined effort, she refused to meet his eyes. "Wouldn' do for me to drop ya now."

"Non, wouldn' do at all, chère." Despite the pain and the dizzying heights, Gambit pressed as close to her as he dared. There was no way in heaven or earth he would do anything to break this spell. Her heartbeats thundered in her chest and he felt every rapid flutter as if it was his own heart.

A surprisingly comfortable silence fell between them as Rogue flew away from the carnage moments before the authorities arrived. The view of the ground grew distant as they increased in altitude. Gambit's head swam as he cast a fleeting glance below. Turning back to study his chère in open admiration, he decided this view was eminently better.

In the waning dusk, the sun cast a hazy, golden halo around her and she glowed like an ethereal vision. The last rays of daylight caught the highlights in her hair bringing out a faint red amid the brown.

Mon Dieu. She's beautiful. He wanted to lean in and kiss those forbidden lips He was so tempted that he wasn't certain he could trust himself. Certainly things would end badly if he gave into temptation and started kissing her mid-flight.

As though she could read his thoughts, Rogue flushed. Her grip tightened and she inadvertently pressed her fingers hard enough into his upper arm that there would be bruises later. Gambit groaned, but made no move to rectify the situation.

"Sorry, sugah." Rogue could scarcely be heard above the wind whipping around them. Her brow furrowed and there was a pang in her expression he couldn't quite read. "Does it bother ya?"

"Quoi?" Remy leaned closer until his face practically touched hers in order to hear her better. Her breath was warm on his cheek in comparison to the chill of the wind. He wondered if her skin would be just as warm.

"That Ah can pick you up so easily," she clarified.

"Non." It had never crossed his mind to be concerned or offended about such things. These moments of insecurity always caught him off guard. All he wanted to do was reassure his strong, vivacious chère that she was perfect. "Why would it bother me? It's part of who you are, chère, and I like you exactly as you are."

Even love you.

The thought came unbidden to his mind, causing him to start and suddenly tense in her arms. His breath caught in his chest making it nearly impossible to breathe.

Love.

Remy hadn't considered that as a real possibility until this moment. And now that he'd thought it, he couldn't deny the truth of the matter to himself.

"You all right, swamp rat? Your ribs givin' you grief?" She carefully readjusted how she held him, relaxing the pressure of her body against his injured side.

Remy shook his head, not trusting himself to speak. Instinct told him to flee, but he couldn't very well do that suspended high above the ground in mid-flight. More than that, he found that at least part of him didn't want to run this time.

How had he come to fall in love with her? Getting to know her had started as a challenge. He'd wanted to crack the mystery that was Rogue. She proved to be a challenge worthy of a master thief. During the time they spent together, a friendship had formed. When he wasn't looking their friendship had progressed to something akin to love. Surely it was desire that had tripped up his better senses.

This wasn't supposed to be how it happened. He didn't think he'd be in danger. Rogue was supposed to be safe. Her guards were too strong, her defences too well practiced. He could woo her, and she wouldn't break. His heart would be safe.

Until it wasn't.

How was it even possible? He'd gambled on love once. It hadn't work out so well. It cost him everything and he didn't think he could lose like that again. Since then he'd kept love at bay. Real love. Over the years he'd indulged in the cheap imitation—lust for love, flattery for honesty, fleeting nights for a lifetime commitment—in hopes of staving off the real thing. It had worked until…until Rogue. Remy closed his eyes, uncertain how to deal with this revelation. Had he finally bet more than he was willing to risk?

"That better?" Rogue's sweet drawl broke into his ruminations. High in the air, she held him closer than she ever dared on the ground. His heart ached.

Gambit pushed aside all thoughts of love and what that might mean for him…for her…for them. She wasn't ready for that. He wasn't ready either. Instead, he fell back on habit, on the charmer's mask he wore to hide the truth from the world. A mask as impermeable as her armour.

He flashed an entrancing grin at her in the hope that it would cover over a multitude of sins. He twined his fingers in her hair.

"Right as rain, chère, especially when I'm in your arms." His voice sounded slightly strangled to his ears, but she didn't appear to notice.

"Ah bet you say that to all the girls." Rogue's cheeks grew red. Was she embarrassed or was it just the wind?

"Don' usually like tellin' a belle femme she's wrong, but 'm 'fraid I must. You're de only one." Despite the flirtatious nature to his words, he couldn't hide the raw honesty in them.

She exhaled sharply, recognising the bite of truth. Indecision reflected in her bright green eyes as tension radiated through every facet of her body. He watched as she fought between giving into her desire and protecting herself. When she finally made the decision to reinforce her shields and rebuff him again, he wasn't surprised by the swell of relief as his brain overrode his heart. As long as she kept the wall around her heart, he wouldn't need to admit how he felt. No need to press the issue as long as she wasn't ready. He could continue to pretend that the easy flirtation was all he wanted. The longer she protected her heart, the longer his heart would be safe.

"We talked about this Gambit. It ain't happenin'. Ever. Ah can't touch you." Melancholy laced her words instead of the well-practiced scathing bite. "What's in this for you? You got a death wish or somethin'?"

He ignored the last bit, though the colour drained from his cheeks. "Dere's plenty here for me chère. Startin' wit' your friendship."

"Ah thought we were already friends." She laughed and they soon fell back into the safety of their usual banter. This was familiar. This he understood. Those nascent inklings of love, well, those were much more complicated.

The Blackbird soon came into view and Rogue started their descent.

"Dinner?" he asked in a desire to prolong her nearness. "I know a place dat serves de best down home cookin' outside of de South."

"Ah'll think about it, swamp rat," she drawled as they finally landed. Though the others were no where in sight, they quickly parted.

A satisfied grin spread across his face as she marched up the ramp to the jet. He'd seen her smile and knew that she'd already agreed, but the protest was part of their repartee.

"Don' you be getting' smug, sugah. Ah said, Ah'll think about it," she quipped from inside the Blackbird. He could hear her rattling around inside as she prepared the jet for departure.

Gambit sloped after her before thinking better of the action. Instead he leaned against the side of the jet and retrieved a cigarette from an inner pocket of his duster. With the tip of his finger, he lit the end of the cigarette with a small infusion of energy and inhaled.

"How does tomorrow at seven sound?" He called over his shoulder, refusing to act on the desire to go to her, wrap his arms around her, and confess it all.

A pause and a reluctant exhale prolonged the moment before she responded with a slight quaver in her voice. "Sounds perfect."

He nodded to no one in particular and exhaled a stream of smoke in a long slow breath. The pain in his chest distracted him from what her hesitation might mean.

When he decided to sit in with the X-men, he hadn't planned for love to even be on the table. Now that it was, it turned the game into a high-stakes gamble. For the first time in quite a while, the hand life had currently dealt him was decent. But, to play it out meant risking more than he was willing to lose and he wasn't confident he could win.

"Sugah, you plan on helpin' or you gonna stand there all day?" Rogue stood at the top of the ramp. Her wind blown curls framed her face and her eyes shone. His belle chère was so full of passion and life that it almost hurt to look at her when he couldn't have her. He concentrated on the glowing end of his cigarette in an effort to keep from saying something stupid.

"Well—?" she stamped her foot forcing him to look at her.

"Oui, I'm comin'." Whistling a jaunty tune, he ground out the cigarette butt and joined her in the doorway.

With both of them standing in the confined space, they almost touched. He lowered his head towards hers with lips parted and his smouldering red eyes half-lidded. If she responded in kind, his fate would be sealed. She grinned up at him for a moment before turning with a tantalising sway of her hips. He couldn't help but tuck away the question of love as he returned the grin and followed her with reckless abandon.

Well then, there was one thing about which he was certain. Win or lose, Remy wasn't ready to leave the table.