Thank you all for the wonderful reviews! I really appreciate all of them. Here is the next chapter. It's a little shorter, but hopefully not too mushy. If it ended up boring, overly mushy, and predictable let me know. I tried to avoid it.

As always, I don't own either Marvel or the X-Men. I hope you all enjoy it!

Layla

Rogue thundered into the women's restroom after an extremely silent and edgy dinner between her and Gambit. He could obviously read her tension and was uncertain of the source, and she didn't even know how to begin to explain why she was suddenly so edgy. Not without sounding like a dumb, insecure female. And she prided herself on not being one of those.

She washed her hands as she left, drying her them before she put her gloves back on. Ignoring the other patrons of the restaurant she exited, drawing a deep breath of the cold night air to try and settle her nerves.

Letting her eyes adjust to the darkness she spotted Gambit leaning against a wooden parking barrier, a cigarette held casually between two fully gloved fingers. Watching his glowing eyes as she approached, she rested her forearms against the wood.

"You taking back your offer?" he asked, his voice deceptively casual as he let his eyes wander around the parking lot.

"What? No," she stumbled, knowing it was both true and not true. "Just thinking about tomorrow."

He snorted mirthlessly. "You ain't much of a liar, Rogue. You want to take it back, take it. It's not like I need it."

She glared at him challengingly. "If you don't need it why are you so worried about my taking it away?"

They glared angrily at each other for a long moment before he looked away and took a log drag on his cigarette. "Somethin' set you off. What was it?"

She hesitated trying to find a way to answer without giving anything away. She finally settled on mild, but truthful deflection. "Logan notices everything. Ah knew he'd be suspicious of you, but Ah don't appreciate his questioning your motives like Ah'm not in the room."

Remy smirked. "He cares about you, chérie. He's gonna do that to any man who gets within 10 feet of you." He exhaled a stream of smoke. "And I did drug you and kidnap you last time."

She tossed him a half hearted glare, relieved he had accepted her answer. "Ah get him being mad last time. But this time Ah'm the one who ran. You didn't even know Ah was coming."

The smirk settled into a dangerous smile. "That's the problem. You came to me."

The look in his eyes and tone of his voice brought a blush into her cheeks, and Rogue looked away. But she couldn't let that go without defending herself. "To help you. It's not like Ah got bored and thought, 'gee, Ah'll go see what Gambit's up to.'" He snickered, but she grumbled anyway. "If Ah could have warned you with a phone call Ah would have."

He eyed her curiously for a moment as he inhaled, the glowing tip of the cigarette blending with his eyes. "Would you have left it at that? Calling and then leaving it alone?"

Rogue blinked in surprise. "Ah was plannin' on it. When you sent the Ace saying you were still in New Orleans, Ah figured you'd found a reason to stay. Ah guess Ah thought if Ah warned you they were comin', your family would help you deal with it."

He nodded sideways, acknowledging her point. "Fair assumption." He paused and exhaled. "That why you're still here?"

She glanced warily at him from the corner of her eye. "It's why Logan's lettin' me be here," she said instead of answering.

Remy snorted. "I don't really care why your Wolverine is here, chérie. Just wanna know why you are."

Annoyed that he was pushing at her emotionally, she challenged back. "Why did you send me the Ace of Spades?"

He raised an eyebrow and held her gaze, his red eyes flickering with irritation. "Even trade. I answer yours; you answer mine. Deal?"

She thought about it for a minute, but curiosity got the better of her. "You first."

He rolled his eyes at her, but answered anyway. "I saw you on the news. When you were fighting Apocalypse. Saw Piotr and the others. I realized you guys had gone asking for help to hold the lines. I figured if something like that came up again, someone should know how to reach me." He stopped and watched her for a moment before continuing quietly. "Honestly, if I'd known for certain where Piotr was I'd have told him instead."

Her breath left in one quick gasp at his words, all the warm feelings that had been starting to surface evaporated, but before she could blast him with her temper and storm away he continued quietly. "I was engaged to Bella Donna, chérie. Not supposed to be thinking about you."

A funny, breathless feeling replaced the sharp hurt. "Were you? Thinkin' about me?" she asked softly, her eyes focused on his.

"More than I should have been," he answered quietly and looked away, his normally teasing and smooth mannerisms giving way to something less certain. "Especially once I sent that card."

Turning to stare blankly at the road in front of the restaurant, Rogue tried to assimilate the new information. And come up with a real answer to the questioned he'd bargained out of her. She couldn't duck and fade if he hadn't. Nor could she completely ignore the fluttering in her stomach. He'd been thinking about her. And because he'd been engaged at the time it had bothered him. She kind of liked that. Maybe more than kind of.

"Your turn, Rogue," he drawled, his voice returning to its normal tone.

It took her a couple of tries to get her mouth and brain on the same page in order to answer. "You helped me. The whole being drugged and kidnapped thing sucked. Ah still hate having my decisions dictated, by anyone," her voice held a slight edge as she remembered waking up tied on the train. It softened as she continued. "But you were right about my needin' to get away. Runnin' around New Orleans helped me clear my head. Ah thought this time Ah could…" she trailed off. She could what? Help? Not leave him to face this alone?

"They want your eyes!" It came out as a strangled sort of yell. "Ah saw what he did to those people, Remy. And then reading your file, what he did to you. And your father just left you to them! You went back and nearly got yourself killed to help him. And he just left you to them!"

She forced herself to focus her scattered thoughts and raging anger at Jean-Luc and turned to face him. "You said Ah had people watching out for me. Ah'm guess watching out for you too. That's what friends do. Even friends with as … weird a history as ours."

Gambit tilted his head to the side and a smile tugged at the corner of his lips, his eyes shining just a little brighter. "You kept the cards."

That wasn't the response she'd expected.

But the blush on her cheeks made a denial impossible. "They're on my dresser mirror." It was the closest she could come to saying she'd been thinking about him too.

He chuckled softly, stepping on the burned out butt of his cigarette. He turned around and faced the street, leaning lazily against the wooden barrier, staring out at the street. They were both quiet for a moment.

Remy sighed, drawing her attention. He turned and faced her, reaching up with one hand to brush her bangs out of her eyes. "So what are we, chérie? Friends? Or something more?"

His eyes pulled at her, the same way they had the day they'd met. Beautiful, dangerous eyes that were looking squarely at her. Her words came out as a whisper. "You'll get bored."

She hadn't meant to tell him that. Darn his eyes for always making her tell the truth.

His head cocked to the side as he looked at her in confusion.

The blush that had been on her face all night deepened, creeping down her neck. She had to be flame red by now. There was no way this conversation couldn't be horribly embarrassing and uncomfortable. "You can't touch me, Remy. And Ah know your reputation. Between Julian and Piotr Ah know that it ain't all rumor. You like girls you can touch. So why is it you're lookin' at me?"

Instead of casually dismissing her fear like she expected he stopped and considered her words. "I've been 'looking at you' since before I knew I couldn't touch you," he said finally. When she raised an eyebrow in disbelief he clarified. "I didn't know you were Xavier's absorber. It wasn't until I noticed your glove was off that I figured out you were that mutant. By then, I was already looking." He smirked. "And we both know I didn't stop looking once I knew."

"No," she interjected, "you just tried to blow my hand off."

He sounded entirely too innocent as he drawled, "I gave you plenty of time to throw it away."

She snorted.

He shifted his shoulders uneasily before returning to the original topic. "You aren't wrong about the other girls. But they were just for fun. And they knew that. I don't want that with you." He looked at her carefully. "I've never done the relationship thing, Rogue. We try this? I'll probably make a mess of it before either of us knows what happened. But I can tell you this, if we try, there's only you. No one else on the side." He paused for a moment and his serious expression softened into something teasing and playful. "Besides. I can't touch your skin with my skin. That don't mean we can't touch."

He reached an arm out, lightly wrapping it around her waist and tugging her to him. Unsure where to put her hands, they stuttered a few times before coming to rest softly against his chest, her fingers playing with the buttons on the duster's edge. As his other arm came around her, Rogue wondered why standing there in the parking lot of a dumb little restaurant felt so much more intimate than his arm around her waist as they slept.

"So, we doing this, chérie?" he asked quietly, his gloved thumb lightly tracing patterns against the skin left bare at her waist by her ballet top.

She looked up at him, slightly surprised at the height difference when she was that close to him, and whispered a warning. "Ah don't know what Ah'm doing." Her words were hesitant, but her grip on his jacket tightened.

Remy shrugged, drawing her in a little closer. "Me either. Guess we'll figure it out together."

Rogue couldn't quite hide the smile that was tugging on her lips. Together. She liked the sound of that. "So you're going to be an X-Man?" she asked slyly.

He smirked at her. "Only if I get a say on the uniform. M'not wearing the boring one the newbies have."

She grinned. "You'll have to take orders from Scott," she teasingly reminded him.

Gambit snorted. "Yeah, we'll see how that goes." She got the distinct impression he wasn't looking forward to that part.

He reached up with one hand and trailed his gloved fingertips down her cheek bone before brushing her white bangs off of her face, his eyes watching her intently the whole time. "You're crazy, chérie, taking a chance on a thief."

The warmth in his eyes and his voice brought her blush back to full strength. Trying to hide her reaction to him, she tipped her face into his chest, careful to keep her skin away from his. "You're the one tryin' for a girl who can't touch."

Remy's response was to pull her more tightly against him, hugging her to his chest and resting his chin against the top of her head. They stayed that way for several moments before he whispered. "I like holding you, chèrie."

Although he couldn't see it Rogue grinned and whispered back. "I like it when you hold me."

Yay Romy. Hopefully. Ready for the big fight?