A/N: Next week, I will be on vacation, and probably will not have my laptop, so there won't be an update next week. Chapter 4 will be up the week after!

Chapter 3: December 15

On the third day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…

Remy lets the six of diamonds explode with a satisfying bang. He charges up the next card in his deck –the two of spades –and and waits for it to go boom. There are only ten cards left. He's used them all up in about an hour, charging each one with glowing magenta energy and then letting it explode in fragments of glossy cardstock and red and black symbols. It's been a cathartic hour, but it's undeniably putting a hurt on his card supply.

He goes through more decks this way…

Remy groans.

"What's wrong, Remy?"

"Are you okay?"

"You're so quiet today, are you sick?"

Wonderful. And he thought he had found a good hiding place in the command center of the Danger Room. The Unholy Trinity has found him.

This is unfair, maybe, Remy thinks. It's not as though Tabby, Amara, and Jubilee try to turn everything they do into crazy adventures that end with embarrassing photos and compromising blackmail material on everyone in the mansion. It just always turns out that way.

"Remy be just fine, ladies," he manages, shooting them his most charming grin. This grin has been getting a bit of a workout lately. It doesn't seem to have suffered for the extra use –the three girls giggle and smile back happily. Remy lets his smile melt into something softer, pleased. Even if Rogue doesn't love him, at least someone in the Institute appreciates him.

This train of thought reminds him that Rogue doesn't love him and he loses the grin entirely.

"Awww," Amara pouts at him, sliding closer and laying a hand on his arm. "You look sad. Tell us what's wrong?"

"Nothing," Remy tries. "Remy's just," he gropes for an excuse, "bored," he finishes. "Don't have nothing to do around here since the angel got here."

Whoops, that sounds a little bitter. Maybe they didn't notice–

"Remy, what is your problem with Warren anyway?"

No such luck.

"Remy don't have a problem with Warren," he tries. He chokes a bit on "Warren" and there's no way they don't notice.

Jubilee gives him a very unimpressed look. He caves.

"He's just so perfect," he mutters.

"In other words," Tabby says to the others in a perfectly audible whisper, "Warren likes Rogue and Remy is jealous."

"Remy is not," he protests, loudly. The girls ignore him, which is probably best because Remy is a lying liar who lies. He is terribly, horribly, awfully jealous. It makes him feel petty, which he doesn't mind so much, and selfish, which he hates.

"Wait, are you jealous because you're in love with Rogue and the thought of anyone else also being in love with Rogue fills you with indescribable rage? Because that's not cool," Amara says.

"Or," Jubilee picks it up, "are you jealous because you're in love with Rogue and you think that Rogue likes Warren back and you don't have a chance with her."

It's not a question, possibly because they already know the answer. Remy just gives them all a sullen glare.

"You don't need to rub Remy's nose in it," he says.

"Oh my god," Jubilee whispers. She's covering her eyes with her hands. "You've got to be kidding me."

Amara peers into his face with squinty eyes. "He looks serious."

"He is," Tabby says to the ceiling, closing her eyes in exasperated rapture. "He really is."

"What do we do?"

"I'm sitting right here," he says.

"We have to let him deal with it himself," Tabby says, the unofficial leader dispensing the wisdom of the four month age gap between the girls. "Some things just need to take their own course."

"That sounds like a fortune cookie," Remy says suspiciously. Tabby smirks.

"Timmy's Wok!" she says cheerfully. "Free fortune cookies with every meal."

Remy sighs heavily. "Remy don't mean to be rude, ladies, but would you mind giving me some space? 'M not really in the mood for company."

Tabby exchanges glances with the other two girls and nods slowly. "Sure, Remy," she says. "But we were hoping to use the Danger Room so…"

Remy sighs and swings his feet down from their resting place on the dashboard of the command center. "Alright," he says with a grin. "Remy knows when he ain't wanted."

With a jaunty salute, he exits the command center and considers his next hiding place. The rec room is out, Bobby and Roberto having commandeered it for the afternoon to catch up on "bro time," which apparently Roberto will be missing out on while visiting his parents. Roberto is one of hardly any of the mansion residents going home for Christmas this year. Remy would wonder, but the sad truth is that a lot of the parents are either hostile towards mutants or worried about their children being in danger from hostile relatives and neighbors. It's a depressing thought.

"Jolly," Remy mutters.

So no rec room. He rejects the kitchen almost immediately. Rogue is probably there, and he doesn't want to see her.

No, that's a lie.

Remy always wants to see Rogue. He burns with his desire to see her. He lives for every glimpse of her face. For just one look at Rogue, Remy would walk through fire. In fact, he's pretty sure he did that exact thing at some point in the Apocalypse fiasco. Of course Remy wants to see Rogue. But he's pretty sure that Warren Worthington III is in the kitchen too and he'll do pretty much anything to avoid him at this point.

Warren is too friendly for Remy to be comfortable. He broke into the man's house. No one should be this friendly to someone who broke into his house. Remy suspects that he's trying to catch Remy off guard by pretending to be nice and then springing something like, "Hey, remember that time you broke into my house?" on Remy. Apart from the fact that Remy hates him for entirely different reasons, this is just poor planning on Warren's part. Remy would never fall for such a lame scheme.

He's still kind of paranoid about the X-Men being nice to him –why on earth would he not be suspicious of Warren Worthington III?

Remy thinks sometimes that he is the only one who uses his brain in this place.

So where can he go that Warren won't be? And where can he hide so that Jean and Scott can't spy on him?

Remy leans dramatically on one of the walls and falls right through it into blackness.

Oh, nice. Apparently, they have a basement.

Luckily, Remy is very agile and extremely flexible and also once had to escape from Belladonna by jumping off the roof of the New Orleans City Hall. He twists through the air and lands on his feet like a talented and dashingly handsome cat.

Remy should probably get some kind of award for being this amazing, but as usual, no one is around to see it happen. The basement is dark and nearly empty. Remy's mutation gives him a limited ability to see in the dark. Or really, his eyes just adjust faster to darkness than the average humans. As Henri used to joke, "Your eyes know that you belong to the night, Remy. That's why they got that red in 'em. Like infrared."

Infrared is a lot nicer than "devil eyes," but Remy thinks that he'd trade the night vision for plain brown eyes that don't mark him as different the instant someone sees them.

There's nothing down here to see anyway. The room he's fallen into is small and dusty, filled with wooden boxes that seem to be empty. It doesn't look like anyone has been down here in years.

Perfect.

Remy settles cross-legged atop one of the bigger boxes and pulls his trench coat a little tighter around himself. It's cold in the basement. He digs his phones out of one of the many pockets inside his coat. It rings in his hand and he grimaces and hits ignore. He is so not in the mood for Belle right now.

He dials from memory and Todd picks up on the second ring.

"Remy!" he greets cheerily.

"Todd," Remy says back. "Tell Remy you got something for him."

"You're so weird," is the predictable, fond response. "My buddy Copper –"

"Copper?" Remy interrupts incredulously. "You make fun of Remy for the way he talks, but you got a friend named Copper?"

"Do you wanna hear or not?"

Remy swallows down another mutter of Copper, and says, "Okay, tell Remy."

"Copper says he knows a guy who knows a guy whose brother is one of those military guys, you know?"

Remy frowns. "You mean one of those commando guys who came in and set up base a few months ago?"

"That's them. Copper says his buddy's friend's brother is part of a unit working on top secret projects. Get this: they're funded," Todd pauses dramatically, "by the government."

Remy rolls his eyes. "Todd, all top secret projects are funded by the government. Haven't you ever seen Men in Black?"

"Aliens aren't real, Remy," Todd says snottily. "Anyway, that's pretty much it. That secret unit or whatever? They're working for the guy those two goons were talking about."

"Name?" Remy asks, very seriously.

Todd's voice is regretful. "Naw, man, sorry. But they're all scared of him. Like, real scared. Copper's buddy's friend's brother said that they call him The Snake when he's not around, 'cause he's so stone cold all the time."

Remy blows out a frustrated sigh. "Okay, well. Thanks, y'know, for doing that. And thank Copper for Remy, too."

"Sure, man. Take care, okay?"

"Oui."

They hang up and Remy stares into the darkness of the basement. This is just great. So great. The Grinch has a taskforce, government funding, and apparently no moral conscience. Perfect.

He sighs too heavily and starts coughing on dust.

"Gesundheit," a voice says from behind him.

"Remy didn't sneeze," he starts scathingly, and then jerks around, because he'd been alone a second ago.

Kurt perches on a box that's nearly as tall as Remy, tail waving slowly behind him like a cat's, pale yellow eyes gleaming eerily.

"Hi," he says, and then jumps down.

"What are you doing down here?" Remy asks irritably. This is his new hiding place! Kurt can get his own.

Kurt grins, that bright, delightful smile that almost makes you forget about how sharp those shiny white teeth really are. "Looking for you, mein freund. How goes the plan to win Rogue's heart?"

Remy grimaces. "Uh, sort of not the point right now. Got bigger problems." He pauses for a moment, shocked at himself. Bigger problems than his feelings for Rogue? Unheard of, obscene, and frankly ridiculous. Remy's relationships are always the biggest problem in his life. But it's true: the coming threat to the X-Men is more important than making sure Warren Worthington III doesn't make a move on Rogue.

This feels like a moment of personal growth, but Remy doesn't actually have time to reflect on it, because Kurt is staring at him and waiting for some clarification.

"Listen," Remy says, "you have to promise Remy that you won't go around telling everybody 'bout this, okay?"

Kurt loves secrets almost as much as he inexplicably loves coffee that tastes like blueberries. He leans forward and says, "Cross my heart."

Remy says, "Someone is going to attack the X-Men."

Kurt says, "What?"

And so Remy explains about the Grinch –though not so much about Todd– and watches Kurt's eyes get bigger and bigger.

"What?" he cries. "The government is trying to destroy us?" His accent gets thicker when he's upset –by the end of the sentence, Remy can barely understand him.

"Well," says Remy, "at least one guy is. But you can't tell anyone!" he adds hurriedly when Kurt starts to jump up to the box again. "Not yet anyway."

"Why not?" Kurt barks, understandably upset.

Remy spreads his hands. "It's Christmas," he explains. "Remy don't wanna worry anybody more than they have to be. Listen," he insists when Kurt looks mutinous. "We can handle it, right? We'll take it slow, figure it out first?"

Kurt starts to calm down. "Can I tell Bobby?" he asks seriously. Remy covers his eyes with one hand.

"Why," he asks the floor, "do you want to tell Bobby?"

"He's my friend," Kurt says, "and he's really good at keeping secrets." When Remy hesitates still, he sweetens the pot. "And he can help us if we have to fight."

Remy rolls his eyes up to the ceiling and sighs. "Fine. Tell the icicle. But he has to swear not to tell anyone!"

"Great!" Kurt says, and disappears in a cloud of sulfur. Remy coughs and waves his hand in front of his face.

Kurt teleports back in with Bobby in tow. Remy coughs some more, eyes watering.

"Kurt, why am I in the basement?" Bobby asks. Remy hadn't thought that it was possible for Bobby to sound this long-suffering, but maybe being close friends with Kurt brings it out in people. Remy's never had the pleasure of being unexpectedly teleported by Kurt, but he's seen the look on Kitty's face often enough to recognize it on Bobby.

"Because we have top secret business to discuss," Kurt says dramatically, "and we need a top secret location."

"This isn't all that secret," Bobby points out pedantically.

"Bobby," Kurt says.

"It's not!" Bobby insists. "It's just the basement, in our house. Anyone could come down at any time. Obviously," he gestures to Remy.

"Kurt followed Remy here," Remy puts in, for what it's worth.

"Bobby," Kurt says again, "this is important."

"Sigh." Bobby doesn't sigh, he literally says the word sigh, like an eighth grader on Disney Channel.

Hey, Remy watched Flash Forward as a kid, okay. He lived in New Orleans, not Mars. They had cable.

"Fine," Bobby says. "What is this very important secret?"

"The government is trying to kill us," Kurt tells him, which is not what Remy said and Kurt is fired from telling people things for always.

"It's not as bad as it sounds," he tries to do damage control before Bobby hyperventilates. "There's just some military commandos and some guy who wants to use us as test subjects or something."

"Oh just that?" Bobby says, voice high-pitched and shaky. Remy was maybe not as reassuring as he wants to be.

"Okay, listen," and he tells the story yet again. He leaves out Todd still because Todd doesn't need the kind of crazy in his life that comes from getting involved with the X-Men. Look what happened to Remy. Todd is already involved somewhat because of Remy, and he'd like to keep that to a minimum while Todd is still alive and relatively sane and in one piece.

When he's finished, Bobby takes it better than Kurt had.

"Okay," he says, "so we need to keep an eye out for this Grinch –excellent codename by the way, Remy –and not let any of the others know what's happening?"

Thank God for reasonable people. "Remy don't want to ruin Christmas, so we're keeping this on the down low until we have more to work with, okay?"

"Also Remy doesn't want Warren involved," Kurt says knowingly. Remy stares at him suspiciously. Has Kurt developed mind reading powers when Remy wasn't looking? How did he know that?

"How did you know that?" Remy asks.

"It's obvious," Kurt says, which is not actually an answer.

"He'd get in the way," Remy explains, which is not actually an explanation and is possibly also untrue. "Remy don't need any pretty boys with fluffy wings getting themselves dirty and messing everything up."

"Remy," Bobby says reprovingly, which is a very strange thing to see. "Warren isn't like that. He's a good friend to the team and he's helped before."

Against Magneto and the Acolytes, no one says, because Bobby and Kurt are both nicer than Remy and Remy is too aware of how much he doesn't deserve to complain about that particular part of the X-Men history.

Also, wasn't that when Remy had stolen that spider thing from Warren's house? Awkward.

"Can we just deal with it?" he asks. "Come on, we can handle this by ourselves."

Kurt looks a little dubious, but Bobby brightens up a little. "Yeah!" he says. "We totally got this. We got this, don't we, Kurt?"

Kurt caves, like Remy knew he would, because Kurt is a sucker for a good secret mission, no matter how mature he might like to pretend he is. Everybody likes a good mission impossible. It's got a theme song and everything.

"So what do we do?" Kurt asks Remy.

Remy shrugs. "Gotta find out what we're up against, first. Remy will go out and get more information. Got Christmas shopping to do anyway," he mutters.

"Whoa, you haven't done your Christmas shopping yet?" Bobby asks, looking scandalized. "Dude, it's like a week away!"

Thanks, Bobby, please remind Remy about how bad he is at doing normal person things. "Remy knows," he growls. "Been busy."

"With what?"

"Leave him alone," Kurt cuts in. "He's in love. It's very distracting."

Remy glares. He's opening his mouth to tell Kurt what he can do with his stupid understanding and his emotional maturity and his dumb insight into Remy's brain, but then his phone rings.

He answers it before he can remember not to. "Quoi?" he snarls into the speaker.

"Uh, what?"

Oh, Tabby. Not Belle then. Or Tante. He's really glad it's not Tante. She wouldn't be happy with the tone he answered with.

"Uh, hi, petit," he says. "What's up?"

"Where are you?" she says exasperatedly. "Rogue has been looking all over for you and she seems to think that we've done something to you, because, and I quote, 'Y'all we're the last ones to see him this morning.'"

Remy can't help but laugh. "Your Southern accent is terrible, petit," he teases.

"Yeah, whatever," Tabby snorts. "Just come up to the kitchen, okay? She's driving me crazy."

"Is that Remy?" He suddenly hears Rogue's voice, tinny through the phone speaker, but still beautiful, vowels soft and southern, with a lilt at the end of his name that makes it sound like she's smiling as she says it. His heart is going pitter-patter, which would be really stupid if it was happening to someone else. As it is, he's pretty sure it just qualifies as pathetic.

"Yeah," Tabby answers Rogue.

"Where is he? Lemme talk to him. Why do you have his phone number?"

"I think the real question here, Roguey," Tabby says, "is why don't you have it?"

Remy breaks in before Rogue can lose her temper. He loves her dearly, and that means he realizes that she can be nasty when she gets riled up. While Remy thinks that a catfight between Rogue and Tabby would probably be more fun than a 'gator wrestling race in the Bayou, he's also pretty sure that no one else will think so. "Okay, okay," he says. "Remy's coming, keep your shirt on, chere."

"He said to keep your shirt on," Tabby tells Rogue.

"He didn't say my name."

"You think he's calling anyone else chere around here? Remy, are you coming?"

"Yeah, Remy's coming," he says, hoping Rogue didn't notice Tabby blurting out his (really, really obvious) tendency to only call Rogue by that particular endearment. He hangs up quickly and grimaces at Bobby and Kurt.

"Guess Remy's going up," he says. Bobby smirks.

"Whipped," he signs falsetto. Kurt rolls his eyes.

"Being whipped, as you say, is only possible if you actually have a relationship, Bobby," he says. "So what does that leave you?"

Bobby sputters and Remy can't help but chuckle. It's still a little embarrassing, but hey, what are friends for anyway? (This is what friends are for, right? He's never had a lot of friends. He's still getting used to the whole process.)

"Go," Kurt waves him off.

"Going," Remy says, and then his face scrunches.

"Uh. How does Remy get out of here?"

000

It turns out that Remy gets out of the basement by climbing on a box and wriggling into an air vent, and then climbing up the air vent until he reaches the big grate in the wall by the front stairs in the foyer. And then he blows the grate off the vent because the climb had been very long and he is very annoyed with the whole thing.

Also he's dusty, which does not help cultivate a Dashing Figure. Nobody wants a dusty Dashing Figure.

Remy takes a moment to run upstairs and change his clothes before going to meet Rogue. He gives his trench coat a mournful look. A thick layer of blue-gray dust covers the sleeves where Remy crawled on his elbows through the vent. He frowns at the coat for a moment and then smirks. Flicking his index finger, he charges the dust on the coat and starts using the glowing energy to scrape all of the fuzz into a ball, which he pulls off of the coat and tosses into the air behind him.

It explodes with a satisfying bang.

Remy runs downstairs (okay, actually, he jumps over the railing and falls downstairs) and then has to skid to a halt outside the kitchen, where Tabby, Amara, and Jubilee are waiting for him.

"Uh," says Remy. He gives them a nervous smile. Amara is giving him a very speculative look. He doesn't like that look. That is the look that came right before the disaster that was Junior Prom Night. They never did get all the glitter off the second floor landing, and Tabby still isn't allowed to go near the utilities closet.

"Remy," Tabby says seriously, "we need to talk."

Whatever she wants, Remy wants no part of it. "Remy ain't gonna help y'all steal the jet again," he says immediately.

"What? No," Jubilee waves her hand.

"Wait –why not?" Tabby pouts, momentarily distracted.

Remy glares. "Never again," he says darkly.

"Beside the point," Amara cuts in. "Remy, we need to talk to you about Rogue."

Remy is instantly, acutely paying attention. "What about Rogue?" he asks.

Tabby gives him her best Dear Old Auntie look and pats his arm. "Now, now," she says. "Don't fuss."

He stares at her until his eyes start to cross. "What?" he says.

"Don't be weird," she says, which is almost too ironic for Remy to stand. "It's just Christmas shopping."

"Don't freak out and mess it up for yourself because you think it's 'going too well,'" Amara adds.

Jubilee wraps her arm around Remy's, well, his elbows –Remy is very tall –and starts guiding him toward the door. "Just don't be an idiot," she advises, and then shoves him into the kitchen.

Naturally, he bangs right into Rogue. They bounce off of each other and Remy spins away and slams his head into a cabinet.

"Oh my god, are you okay? Did I touch you? Remy! Answer me!" She bangs his head off a wooden cabinet and she's worried about touching him? True, getting drained by Rogue's powers isn't a cake walk or anything, but Remy really thinks the cabinet was almost as bad.

He groans. "Just fine, chere. How about talking not so loud, maybe?"

"Sorry," Rogue drops her voice to a whisper, gloved hands coming up to hover near her mouth. It's so freaking cute, Remy wants to pinch his own cheeks. He pushes for one last charming grin and manages a small smile. Eh. As long as it's charming, he'll take it.

"Remy hear you wanna go Christmas shopping, Roguey. Need a ride?"

... three French hens, two turtledoves, and a partridge in a pear tree!

A/N: Timmy's Wok makes excellent sweet-and-sour chicken and their crab rangoon is to die for.

Additional, No-Longer-A-Spoiler Disclaimer: I don't own Men in Black. Or Flash Forward. Don't own Todd or Copper, either.