Chapter 2: Logan

Gambit was a little dubious about sparring with Logan in the Danger Room. Sure, if he did lose control of his power Logan would survive it, probably, but that wasn't exactly something he wanted to experiment with.

Combat training was compulsory at Xavier's, though it was referred to as self defence around the students and parents. Despite his power control problems, he was no exception. Sure, if the school did happen to get invaded, he'd probably be the chief cause of friendly fire, and they'd be better off keeping him out of the fight until all hope was lost; but he still needed training.

His long years of experience in savate, however, meant his combat abilities were better than those of his contemporaries. As such, he found himself in the top five combatants in the school right up there with Storm, Morph, Kurt, and of course Logan, who was probably #1 on that list.

The program they were using was a simple room with blue mats on the floor. Gambit was amazed at just how lifelike things were in the Danger Room. The biggest difference — for him — was that it took a lot more effort to charge up holographic objects than it did the real thing, with few exceptions. This meant that real things they brought into the Danger Room, like clothing, or his staff, would be the first targets of any accidental charges.

"Alright, Cajun," Logan said in his usual gruff manner. "No holding back, you got that?"

Gambit whirled his staff around his arms. "Oh there is no holding back once we get started. You sure about this mon ami? You are going to get blown up."

"I'm sure."

"Never took you for a masochist."

Logan gave him a long look. "Stop stalling."

Gambit sighed and moved from his casual stance into a fighting one. He really didn't like this idea.

There was no sign of a charge at first, and then one began to seep into Gambit's wooden practice staff. He didn't bother to remove it as that would've been a pointless distraction. He continued to fight, and the magenta light imbued in the staff began to glow brighter.

Then Gambit's staff started acting as a conduit to charge up Logan's clothing too. The minimal contact meant that only small charges were passed on, but they still ruined Logan's clothes and packed a punch. Logan healed up like each one was nothing.

Logan found an opening in Gambit's defence and tackled him to the ground. The charge in Gambit's staff moved directly into what was left of Logan's clothing.

"Merde!"

Logan exploded.

Gambit rolled over and threw up. His vomit charged up even as it left his body and exploded

"Remy? Are you okay?" Storm asked over the speakers.

Gambit took a moment to get his breath, and shut his eyes just so he wouldn't have to look at the bits of Logan lying around. He was naked, but not even a single hair on his body had been harmed.

"Yeah, sure, I'm just peachy," Gambit replied sardonically. "I told you this was a stupid idea. Are we sure Logan's alright?"

"He's fine. He's already healing," Storm assured him. "Though it might take him longer than usual. This was fairly extensive."

"No kidding."

There was a 'breakfast nook' in the mansion where most people chose to eat outside of the regular meal times. It had a separate kitchen from the dining hall, but the two shared a door.

It was to the breakfast nook that Logan went sometime later while munching on his third protein bar in the last ten minutes. He noted that Gambit was already there, but paid him no mind as he raided the cupboards for additional snack food, and pulled out a steak to cook.

While the steak was sizzling away in the pan, Logan turned to the fridge for a beer. He paused briefly when he noted the number of beers there, and as he popped his open and closed the fridge again, he looked over at Gambit. Sure enough, the 18 year old had an empty beer bottle in front of him and was drinking a second Canadian beer.

"You owe me a case of beer," Logan said as he turned back to his food.

"Only had two bottles," Gambit replied.

"You'll have gone through a whole case by the time we get to do a beer run."

"Ah. Duly noted."

Gambit had thought Logan was going to rebuke him for underage drinking. Apparently he didn't care about stuff like that. Or maybe he considered Gambit to be an exception.

Nothing more was said between them while Logan continued to eat his snacks, drink his beer, and cook his steak. When the steak was finally done, Logan joined Gambit at the bench.

"All that healing is hungry work, I take it," Gambit said, nursing his beer and watching as Logan continued to stuff his face.

"Yep."

"Sorry."

"Forget it, kid. I knew what I was getting into."

Gambit shook his head. Logan gave him a long look.

"You ever killed someone?" Logan asked, and before Gambit could reply, added: "I ain't asking if there's a warrant for your arrest, or if there's someone who might be out to get you. I know Storm already covered that with you the day you arrived. I'm asking if you've ever killed someone."

Gambit looked at his beer and said nothing for a time as he considered what to say. If it had been anyone else he would've found a way to avoid answering the question and change the subject. But this was Logan, and if there was one thing he'd learnt about Logan in the last three months, it was that Logan had been through more crap in his life than anyone.

"Just one person that I know about," Gambit said finally. "You'd think after having power control problems for nine months there'd be more. Maybe there are, I don't know."

Logan nodded.

"Threw something at him," Gambit went on, the words leaving his lips despite his desire not to say any more. "Didn't know I'd charged it. First time I'd ever charged something by accident, well, first time in three years, anyway. His upper body just…splattered everywhere."

"Alright," Logan said. "Good to know."

"You ain't gonna spread that around are you?" Gambit asked suspiciously.

"Ain't anyone else's business."

Gambit visibly relaxed, and there was further silence for a time.

"Are you sure about this?" Gambit asked. "I mean, I get it. Life ain't gonna wait for me to get my powers under control before it throws more crap at me. But frankly, if a situation comes up, I'm running the hell away before I blow up a city block." He considered for a moment. "I hope that's an exaggeration."

He had to admit, the Danger Room's reports on the amount of energy in his explosions was all kinds of terrifying.

Logan gave him a long look and didn't reply. Gambit looked back at him, then sighed.

"You're going to give me the line about needing to make sure I can run away, aren't you?" Gambit said with a resigned sigh.

"Nope."

"But only because I just did it for you, right?"

"Yep."

"Merde, Logan. I do not want to keep blowing you up. I really don't."

Logan took a swig of his beer. "Neither do I. But strictly training you with the sims is not going to properly prepare you for a real life situation. You're not afraid of hurting the sims; you are afraid of hurting real people, and that's something we need to tackle."

Gambit sighed.

"I noticed you didn't really do any line-of-sight explosions," Logan went on between mouthfuls of steak. "Next session we'll have more real things in there."

"There won't be many of those, if any at all. Not in a combat situation," Gambit said after a swig of his own beer. "There might be something if I'm surprised, but otherwise it'll all be touch-based charges."

Logan nodded. "And you always know when they'll go off?"

"Always. Well…" Gambit considered. "Probably better to say that I know at what level I can definitely maintain my hold on a charge, even if someone surprises me."

"Today went past that?"

"Yeah."

"Alright. I think from now on we'll use a safeword. You use it when you reach your limit, and I'll vacate the Room so you can release the charge."

"That's a really good idea," Gambit said, feeling greatly relieved by the suggestion. He really didn't want to blow up any more people, even healers like Logan. "What safeword?"

"I'll let you pick."

"Hmm…" Gambit pondered for a moment. "I think I'll go with 'Merde'."

Logan gave him a cynical look. Gambit grinned back winningly.

"You ever going to join my tai chi class, Cajun?" Logan asked.

"Isn't that on at 7 in the morning?"

"Yep."

"That is way past my bedtime."

Logan snickered. "You always been a night owl?"

"Well, I've always leaned that way. Didn't really start staying up all night on a regular basis until my powers went out of control." Gambit shrugged. "Less people around."

"Hmm." Logan grunted. "You know Ororo wants you to try out tai chi as a possible hobby."

"You sound like you're personally offended that tai chi is being called a 'hobby'," Gambit replied with a smirk.

Logan gave him another long look as he ate more steak.

"Well, maybe if you actually held the class at a decent hour I would actually attend it," Gambit said.

Logan chewed. Gambit grinned wickedly at him and finished off his beer.

A couple of days later, Gambit and Logan had another Danger Room session together, this time with Rogue monitoring. Gambit found that the implementation of the safeword made him a lot less nervous about the session, which made a huge difference in how he handled it.

"Did well today," Logan said as they exited the Danger Room. "Didn't even need to use the safeword."

Gambit shrugged. "Knowing I could avoid blowing you to pieces helped."

Logan nodded. "Good to know. We'll make next session harder."

"Of course we will."

Rogue stepped out of the control room and joined them at the same time that Storm and Kitty appeared in the hallway with a man that looked strangely familiar to Gambit, though he couldn't place him. The man was tall and his left arm and left leg were cybernetic, though unlike the Reavers, they actually looked like an arm and a leg.

"Ah, Logan, Remy, Rogue," Storm greeted them. "This is Forge. He's here for the annual Danger Room maintenance."

"Maintenance?" Gambit repeated with a quick glance at Logan, then:"Wait, Forge? As in Forge Industries? You're the one who fixed the Golden Gate Bridge."

Forge had the look of someone who was tired of having that pointed out to him. "Yeah." He looked towards Rogue. "Rogue? You're the other one I'm teaching Danger Room maintenance to?"

"Yep, that's me," Rogue replied, holding her hand out to him. "Pleasure to meet you." She nodded her head towards Logan and Gambit. "The boys have finished their session, so the Danger Room's officially ready for annual maintenance to begin."

"Great," Forge said. "Let's get started."

And with those words, Kitty and Rogue followed him into the control room.

"So, how do we know Forge?" Gambit asked Storm as they headed back down the hall.

Forge had been on the TV a mere two weeks after Magneto had moved the Golden Gate Bridge. It was back in it's proper place, good as new. The only explanation given was "a new experimental technology" which had spawned a great many conspiracy theories.

"He is a graduate of this school, and now one of the benefactors," Storm replied, then added in the voice of someone who is getting ahead of the gossip train: "He is also my ex-boyfriend."

"Oooh."

"And right now he is the only one who knows how to maintain the Danger Room," Storm went on with a sigh. "I am just glad we have a couple of technically minded people willing to learn from him, and he has the time to teach him."

She pressed the button for the elevator, and the doors opened almost instantly,

"What exactly does he do?" Gambit asked curiously as the three stepped inside the elevator. 'I haven't really looked into Forge Industries."

Storm pressed the button for the ground floor.

"Research and development," Storm replied as the elevator doors shut and they began to rise. "Although with his mutation, which is Invention, it is more development and research. His mutation gives him the unique ability to invent devices, but he has to reverse engineer them to figure out how they work."

"Huh, interesting," Gambit said thoughtfully.

"He currently has a contract with US Defence. I really could not tell you all the things he has worked on, though I can say that he created the plastic prison they held Magneto in recently."

"Well, that's nothing to brag about," Gambit said jokingly. "Magneto escaped."

"Only because Mystique helped him," Storm replied tolerantly.

"Oh did she? Well, I guess that does change things." Gambit's red and black eyes twinkled with mischief.

"Ex-boyfriend, huh?" Logan asked. "How long were you together?"

"A few years."

"Sounds like it was serious."

Storm shrugged nonchalantly. "We were teenagers."

When he wasn't busy with Danger Room sessions, hobby-related classes, or kitchen duty, Gambit busy doing maintenance around the school. Being a school full of mutants learning to control their powers, there were lots of little repairs that needed to be done, though Gambit was finding that maintenance work tended to come in waves. There would be little to no repairs needed for a couple of weeks, and then it would feel like everything had decided to break down at once.

Gambit turned the handle of one of the maintenance rooms and found it locked.

"Seriously Logan?" he muttered.

Logan had known he was going to need access to this particular room. It was one of the few he didn't have a key to (something which Gambit was rather annoyed about), and it was the only one that had what he needed to do his scheduled repairs that night.

He muttered under his breath and headed back to his room to retrieve his lockpicks. He hated not keeping his lockpicks on his person, but he didn't want to risk blowing them up: they were a pain to replace.

Picking the lock was no problem at all, and with that done he was finally able to get on with his work. He made sure to lock the door again when he was done.

Rogue breathed in deeply as she entered the breakfast nook and smiled when she saw Gambit by the stove.

"Hey sugar," she said as she wandered over. "Whatcha cooking?"

"Steak, for Logan," Gambit replied. "Blew him to pieces again in the Danger Room."

He took a swig of the beer he had sitting nearby.

"Ah." Rogue nodded sagely. "Didn't yell 'merde' soon enough, huh?"

"Oh, no, I said it in time," Gambit said irritably. "Logan got it into his head that I was using the safeword too soon, so instead of dropping the fight and getting out when he was supposed to, he continued fighting."

Rogue blanched. "Yeah, that sounds like him. I knew one of these days that tactic was going to blow up in his face. Didn't expect it to happen literally."

"Tactic?" Gambit asked as he flipped the steak over.

"Oh he'll do this thing where he essentially accuses us of not trying hard enough, and then he'll up the stakes somehow. It's really annoying," she said. "It's even more annoying when we find out he's right."

Gambit might have smiled, but he just wasn't in the mood.

"I bet Storm was real happy. She was monitoring right?" Rogue asked and Gambit nodded. "Well, it's nice of you to make a steak for him. More than he deserves."

"He's gonna be hungry when he finishes healing," Gambit said irritably, "and I need something to take my mind off seeing his guts splattered across the Danger Room. Again."

"And here I am, making you discuss it. Sorry, sugar," Rogue replied and sat on the nearest clear bench top. "Okay, so changing the subject, well, sorta: That steak smells amazing. What in the world are you doing to it?"

"It's called a mixed pepper crusted steak," he said. "I'm using green, black and Szechuan peppercorns."

Rogue noted a plate nearby that looked like it had ground peppercorns in it. She gestured. "Leftovers?"

"Yeah. I think I ground too many."

"Oh well, done now. You can always cook more steak."

Gambit threw a look at her. "You want me to cook you one, don't you?"

"No thanks," Rogue replied with a grin. "I like pepper but not that much."

Gambit chuckled.

He finished cooking the steak shortly thereafter and set it aside on a plate. His timing was good, because Logan showed up, munching on a protein bar, shortly thereafter.

"Steak, there," Gambit said, pointing to the plate on the bench by one of the bar stools. "Don't say I never do anything nice for you."

He stalked over to the fridge to grab a second beer while Rogue looked on in amusement. Logan grunted and sat down at his plate. He gave it a sniff, then a grunt.

"Thanks, Cajun," he said, took the final bite of his protein bar, and began cutting it up.

Gambit didn't reply, he just opened up the beer and took a good long swig before stalking towards the door.

"Do not drink that in front of the kids," Logan said without looking away from his food.

"This coming from the guy who persists on smoking in the mansion despite being repeatedly told to stop that," Gambit retorted and left.

Rogue giggled. "He's got you there, Logan."

Logan glanced up at her as he chewed. Rogue grinned at him, then slid back onto the floor and followed after Gambit.

"Logan, you're not seriously letting Remy drink your beer, are you?"

Gambit paused at the sound of Storm's voice coming from a nearby classroom and quietly moved off to the side, so he could listen in discreetly.

"Yep," was Logan's simple reply.

"He's under age!"

Gambit could just imagine Logan's shrug.

"Depends on what country you're in," Logan replied languidly. "Lots of countries the drinking age is 18."

"In this country, he's under age."

"'Ro, I don't care. Since he's been here, he's blown me up twice, and that was under controlled conditions. That on top of whatever he went through before he came here. He was telling us how damaging his explosions could be before we even tested him in the Danger Room. Somehow I don't think he found out the easy way," Logan said firmly. "If he wants a drink, he can have one."

"Alcohol is not the answer, Logan. Not normally, and certainly not for someone who, if they lose their inhibitions, can cause those exact kinds of explosions."

Gambit looked down at his feet. He hated hearing his thoughts out loud.

"I ain't suggesting we let him become an alcoholic," Logan said shortly. "Look, all things in moderation, right—"

"Logan—"

"I'm keeping an eye on him, but I don't think you need to be worried. He might drink enough to take the edge off, but no one's more aware of the consequences of losing control of his powers than he is," Logan said firmly, then added in a slighter louder tone: "Ain't that right, Remy?"

Gambit smiled and called back. "It's too late, Stormy. I've been under age drinking since I was 16."

Logan chuckled. Storm opened up the door and looked out at him.

"How long have you been there?" she asked.

Gambit shrugged. "A bit. Don't worry, I'm not going to—"

"That is what they all say," Storm cut in, a dire expression on her face.

"I could always start smoking again," Gambit said ingeniously. "I'm legal for that. Now."

Logan guffawed.

"This is not a joke," Storm said, her eyes practically piercing through Gambit.

"We all have our vices, Stormy," Gambit replied cheerfully. "But like Logan said, I'm not gonna drink enough alcohol to lose control. I'm just not."

Storm looked at him in silence for a moment. "Drinking is not a hobby."

"I know—"

"And it will never be a hobby."

"Got it."

"It might be a quick fix for the time being, but I expect you to give it up when you do find your hobby," Storm said, "is that understood?"

"Absolutely."

"It is not to be your first port of call when you have a bad day," she went on. "It is to be the last resort."

"The only times I've drunk since I've been here is after blowing Logan into little bits," Gambit said coolly. "You were there both times. I would think that you of all people would understand why I wanted a drink."

Storm gave him a measured look and continued: "And you will not drink in front of the students."

"Logan's already covered that."

Storm looked back at Logan, who merely chuckled.

Logan looked at his two cards, grunted, and pushed them towards the centre of the table.

"I fold," he said.

Gambit grinned at Rogue, who sat across from him. "What about you, chere? In or out?"

"Don't go rushing me, swamp rat," Rogue said. "I'm still new at this game."

"Okay, I won't then," he replied and leaned forward, resting his head in his hand. "I'll just sit here and gaze adoringly at you."

Rogue glanced up from studying the cards, raised her eyebrows at his mock lovesick expression, and went back to the cards. "Gaze all you want."

"I will. I will gaze, and I will sigh. Sigh because you're so wondrous, and yet, beyond my reach." Gambit said, and gave a dramatic, over-the-top sigh.

"Where'd you get your acting lessons, Cajun?" Logan asked wryly as he picked up his beer. "The pig farm? Because you're a large ham."

"Where'd you get your jokes from, Wolvie?" Gambit retorted merrily. "That place where you…wait…" he put on a confused voice and frown, "something about…forgetting the punchline?"

"I call," Rogue said, and pushed in the appropriate amount of poker chips.

"I call as well," Storm said, putting in her chips as well.

"Not me," said Morph. "I fold."

"Call," Gambit said.

He reached over and dealt a fourth community card in the middle. Rogue blanched as the Four of Hearts appeared.

"You really need to work on your poker face, chere," Gambit said.

"You really need to work on your face," she retorted. "I guess I fold then."

"My face is the pinnacle of manly perfection," Gambit replied, rubbing his lightly stubbled chin for emphasis.

"It's the pinnacle of something all right."

"Check," said Storm.

"I check as well," Gambit said.

He dealt the final card.

"Check."

"I raise…" Gambit picked up one of his chips. "10."

Storm studied him for a moment. "Call."

She put in her chip. Gambit turned over his cards: a pair of fives.

"Full House," he said, gesturing to the other five and the two Jacks in the middle.

"Hmm." Storm turned over her cards. "Three of a Kind. You win."

Gambit grinned and reached for the pot.

Logan finished off his beer and stood. "Alright, that's me for the night. Cajun, don't sleep in too late. We've a mission tomorrow."

"We do?" Gambit asked in surprise.

"Yep. In Canada."

"Canada?" Storm repeated.

Morph looked at the empty beer bottles on the table and chuckled.

"Yep. A very important mission," Logan said with a nod. "Can't possibly put it off. Speaking of which, Rogue, you wanna come with? You can get your hours up on flying the Blackbird."

"Oh, um, sure?" Rogue replied, looking between Logan and Storm uncertainly.

Storm narrowed her eyes. "You had better not be planning on taking the Blackbird for a beer run."

"You know I hate flying."

"I know you like beer more."