T for language.
J is for Jubilee
It was easy for people at the mansion to dismiss Jubilee as nothing more than the bubbly, loud firecracker that they saw every day. It was easy to attribute her gossiping to her being nosy, to assume the embarrassing comments she made were because of some love of making people uncomfortable. Or even that she didn't give a flying fuck about respect and was oblivious to social conventions. In Gambit's opinion, those people were ridiculous.
There were, as always, many assumptions flying through the school. One was that it was only Logan who gave Gambit a run for his money in poker. He was the biggest challenge by far, but by no means the only one. People usually compared their own personal losses to Gambit's huge pile of winnings and bowed to him as a poker god. They didn't see Jubilee's modest, but significant, pile. Gambit did, because he saw a lot of himself in the younger girl, she just happened to use it differently. She could read people just as well as he could.
She saw people. He knew it from the first time he met her. How else would she know all that's going on at the school? And she did know everything. From who was dating whom, to everyone's comings and goings, and had a good guess on everyone's deepest secrets. She knew Bobby and Kitty were going to fool around in high school weeks before he cheated on Rogue. She knew about Gambit reworking the school's security when only he and Storm were in on it. She knew more about Rogue than anyone save Gambit. She knew the second Logan and Storm started sleeping together. Next to himself, Gambit would rank her as the most observant person in the mansion.
Jubilee was the first to see Gambit and Rogue's relationship for what it really was. Sure, everyone saw the sexual tension from the second Gambit walked in the front door. They weren't exactly subtle, the looks they gave each other, the amount of time they spent together. They were friends though, for months before they became involved. As soon as it grew into something more, Jubilee knew it. The touches that lasted a little longer than necessary. The lingering looks. The unnecessary brushes when they walked by each other. The times when they just happened to be absent at the same time.
Of course, Logan knew right after she did. He could smell it all over them. Storm of course figured it out not long after; she knew how Gambit acted when he was sleeping with someone. Everyone else had already assumed they were having sex so it wasn't exactly ground breaking news.
Only Jubilee knew the depth of their feelings, though. She'd seen Rogue with Bobby, she'd seen how she acted when she was in puppy love. Jubilee immediately knew Gambit was different. Bobby had dragged Rogue down, made her question herself, filled her with self doubts. Bobby tried to tame the Rogue, capture her and mold her into what he wanted. Gambit was the exact opposite. He opened the Rogue cage and let her run wild. With him, Rogue walked with her head higher, her back straighter. Rogue wasn't the kind of woman who needed a man in her life, but she'd found a man that enhanced her natural strength instead of trying to demolish it. Rogue's smile became a little less forced, her walk held a little more swagger, the woman she was flourishing more under the influence of him. Because of that, Jubilee decided she needed to have a discussion with Gambit.
Jubilee was nothing if not industrious. Gambit taught a few of the better fighters twice a week in Savate, a form of martial arts. Jubilee convinced one of his students to "injure" himself toward to end of the lesson, causing Gambit to stay behind with him. As soon as Jubilee came into the gym, the boy hopped up. "It feels a lot better now, thanks Mr. LeBeau." With that, he was out the door.
Gambit smirked and leaned against the gym's wall, arms crossed. "You know, petite, if you wanted to talk, you could have just said so."
Jubilee shrugged. "Subterfuge is much more fun," she said and made her way into the gym. Gambit admired that about her; when she had something to say, she didn't shuffle her feet or put her hands in her pockets, she went straight to the point. "I need to talk to you about Rogue."
Gambit raised an eyebrow. "I expected a visit from Logan, but not the overprotective papa act from you."
Jubilee snorted. "Logan is a hammer, he knows how to beat problems into submission. He lacks style."
"Couldn't agree more."
"So, since you two started sleeping together-"
"Who said we're sleeping together?" Gambit asked mildly.
Jubilee rolled her eyes. "You're trying that, really? With me? Cute. Anyways, about you two. You weren't here for the whole Bobby thing." She had Gambit's attention now. Rogue had told him about Bobby, of course, and he'd gotten varying stories from the mansion's inhabitants, but he figured Jubilee would have the most accurate version of events, mostly because she was the mansion's walking social encyclopedia. "Bobby…Bobby is my friend. But he wasn't good for her. They weren't good for each other. Bobby still had the mindset of teenager, which is fine, that's what he was. But Rogue had what, half a dozen people running around her head at the time? Over half of who were way old with a whole lot of weird shit under their belts. She wasn't a teenager like he was."
"Bobby wasn't ready," Gambit said. "Makes sense."
"Yeah, well, it didn't go well. You weren't here to see how she acted with him. It was like she was being pressed in from all sides, the dudes in her head and the dude on her arm," Jubilee went on. "It was pretty crappy, really. You could see Rogue in there, but she was kinda fighting for a way out, you know?"
"I do," Gambit said, flashing to the nights when Rogue had troubles pushing back the psyches and remembering who she was.
"So do you appreciate now how huge it is for her to act like she does with you?" Jubilee asked. Gambit cocked his head at her. "What, you think just everyone here knows her real name?"
"What makes you think I know it?"
Jubilee rolled her eyes again. "Let me save you some trouble here, stop questioning what I know and this will be a lot easier. My point is, you're like a Rogue-awesomeness booster. She's badass on her own, but you…accentuate it. Help her pop right out of that cage she built." Gambit looked at her in silence, a rare thing. "We both know she cares about you a lot. You can spout 'we're good friends' or 'friends with benefits' bullcookies to me, that's fine, but you know it's true. I don't know you well enough to say for sure, but my bet is you care for her too. Or else you'd be fucking everyone that wasn't wearing a chastity belt, like Storm warned us. So do me a favor, don't fuck it up, sport." She patted his arm, and turned on her heel, nearly bouncing out of the room.
Gambit stood, staring at the spot she'd been for a few seconds before he thought to move. It was rare for someone to startle him into speechlessness, but then again, Jubilee was a bit of a rarity. Of course, he'd already noticed Rogue cared about him. He was a reasonably intelligent man, and Rogue wasn't exactly quiet about what she thought. No one had approached him like Jubilee had. Logan had, very colorfully, told him to keep his dick out of Rogue. Bobby had just sent him glares. Storm had taken him aside and warned him against leaving a trail of broken hearts, only alluding heavily to Rogue. Everyone who'd talked to him had given him lectures about sex and him being an awful horndog. Jubilee didn't see him as a sex crazed pervert, she lectured him about feelings. The only person in the entire mansion who'd considered, who was actually convinced, that what he had with Rogue wasn't purely physical. He paid more attention to Jubilee after that. And laughed when people dismissed her as stupid.
No, Jubilee was more than met the eye. She was the only person other than Logan, and eventually Gambit, who knew Rogue's real name. She stumbled on it quite by accident. She and Rogue had been watching late night TV when an ad for Donnie and Marie Osmond came on. Rogue had, very subtly, twitched. Jubilee assumed she just hated the Osmonds. A few months later, more than a year before Gambit came to Xavier's, Jubilee was delivered a letter with a postmark from Mississippi while working mail room duty. She frowned, looking at the name. "Marie D'Ancanto…" she muttered. As part of her role as resident gossip, she needed to know everyone. And she did. Everyone at the school, she knew their names and backstories by heart, except…then the pieces fell into place. "Rogue."
She, for the first time, was a little nervous to talk to her friend. She knew she had to give her the letter, maybe even explain why she knew Marie was her, but she really didn't want to. She knew what had happened to Rogue, how she was treated, and couldn't imagine anyone in Mississippi sending her a letter that could be anything more than destructive. She wished she could just throw it away and pretend it never existed. But damn it, she had morals and just couldn't do that.
After classes that night, Jubilee had gone to Rogue's room. Half of her hoped Rogue wouldn't answer when she knocked, and she realized belatedly that she probably could have just slid the letter under the door and ran for it, when Rogue answered. "Hi?" Rogue asked slowly when Jubilee said nothing.
"Hey, Rogue, uhm, this came today," she said, passing the letter to her friend.
Rogue stilled, running the envelope through her fingers. A frown was playing on her features, her mind a million miles away. It was as if Jubilee wasn't even there. She knew Rogue valued her privacy and turned to leave when her friend spoke. "I wrote to my parents last month," she said, eyes never leaving the envelope in her hands. "I told them everything about me and my mutation. What I knew, what's going on with me, and that I'm safe. I told them to write me at this address if they could answer." Jubilee looked at her, waiting for her to continue. "I-I don't know if I want to see what they said."
"That's your call," Jubilee said. "But you wouldn't have written to them if you didn't want an answer."
"I wanted…I figured if they said they still wanted nothing to do with me, it'd at least be like closure, you know?" she said, fiddling with the edges of the envelope. She seemed to steel herself then and ripped the envelope open. Jubilee could see that the letter was short, probably just a paragraph long. Rogue's eyes flew across it quickly, then her fists clenched, wrinkling the paper until her knuckles were as white as the sheet.
"Rogue?" Jubilee asked softly. She could swear the other girl's eyes were starting to water. Rogue made an anguished and disgusted sound before crumpling the letter into a ball. She held it out to Jubilee, eyes hard.
"Light it up." Jubilee didn't hesitate, throwing the ball into the air and shooting fireworks right at it. The letters fell at their feet, blackened and disintegrating. Jubilee looked at Rogue to see her face crumbling.
"Oh Rogue," Jubilee said. She threw her arms around her friend, yanking her close. Rogue twisted away, careful of her skin but Jubilee didn't give a damn. She locked an arm around Rogue's back and the other holding her neck in place. Rogue, a little blindsided, wrapped her arms back around Jubilee. She couldn't remember the last time someone besides Logan had hugged her like this. Even Bobby, her boyfriend at the time, hesitated a moment before touching her. Jubilee was having none of that. She pulled her friend into a vice-like grip, letting Rogue shake and cry on her shoulder. She rubbed her friend's back in circles, promising her everything from, "It will be okay," to, "I'll blow them off the planet." It was in that moment that Rogue decided if she had a best friend, it was Jubilee.
Jubilee cemented herself and Gambit and Rogue's favorite person when she started to help them sneak around. Neither one of them was particularly worried about getting "caught," but they did prefer people not to walk in on them. They overheard her, very early on in their relationship, directing people away from their room. "Rogue isn't in there," she said to Storm. "She was working on her bike in the garage."
Two weeks later, they found themselves mysteriously alone in the mansion. While most of the X-Men were out on either missions or errands, Jubilee had been put in charge of afternoon activities and shuffled all of the kids outside, no exceptions. She said Rogue and Gambit had a lot of work to do, and waved jovially, locking the door behind her.
Rogue's favorite was when Bobby was storming around the mansion, looking for his misplaced phone, sure that Gambit had stolen it. He had, but that was beside the point. Rogue and Gambit were under his blankets, breath heavy and hands wandering, when they heard the yelling.
"Where is that cowardly, Cajun motherf-"
"BOBBY." Jubilee happened to live a few doors down.
"Where is he? I need my phone back! I have a date tonight and the address is in there!" Bobby shouted.
"Bobby Drake, if you yell at me one more time, I swear to god, I will follow you on every date for the rest of your life and sing "Bad Bad Leroy Brown." ALL NIGHT."
"You wouldn't."
"You'd think after all these years, people would stop questioning my commitment to a really embarrassing, good threat," Jubilee said darkly. "You added her on Facebook, you dipstick, just talk to her that way."
"I-god, fine, I want my phone back though!" he snapped, knowing he'd lost.
"Stop losing it then," she yelled after his retreating back. They heard Jubilee walking back to her room, muttering, "Ya moron." She pounded her fist on Gambit's door as she walked by and yelled, "Give Iceprick his phone back!" before slamming her own door closed.
Jubilee was fine with people underestimating her. In the field, it served her well. It got irritating at home though, when once in awhile she needed someone to do more than roll their eyes at her, which is when she went to Rogue or Gambit. They alone truly saw the inner Jubilee, the one that was more than giggles and fireworks. The Jubilee who loved her friends fiercely and would do what she had to for them.
A/N I don't know why, but Jubilee has been on the brain lately. Plus, the hardcore Jubilee hate was bugging me. Thanks again to everyone who followed this and to my lovely reviewers, Booklover9477, AnnaWalker.92, HermioneSakuraGardner07, couplest, Suze Nora, and anon.