Remy's Diabolical Plan

Chapter Eighteen: The Diabolically Late Realization

~X~

The rain had stopped.

Once they were safely outside of the restaurant and walking the sidewalk down the lantern lit street, Rogue jerked her hand out of Pyro's and turned a hearty glare on him. A lot of good it did, though. The Australian just stood and grinned at her, scratched his armpit, and then went back to grinning.

"Was that really necessary?" she asked through gritted teeth. The night wind felt good on her skin that still felt oddly flushed.

His arms lifted so that his fingers could lace together behind his head. "Eh'," he shrugged. "Maybe not, but ya gotta admit, it was sorta fun."

Her eyes closed as a wave of annoyance washed over her. "No. No, it wasn't. I asked you to help me, I didn't ask you to-" she flushed, "-do that! My friend Kitty was there." she tried to explain. "Kitty has a big mouth. She's gonna tell everyone within a fifty mile radius."

"Yeah, 'bout that." The redhead gazed up at the streetlight. "Don't worry 'bout it. I gotcha covered."

"What?" She asked slowly, eyebrows knit together in suspicion.

Then his satanic gaze was on her. His grin widened. "Weeellll, remember our deal? A favor for a favor?"

Rogue had the sudden urge to slap herself in the face. "Yes." she replied flatly.

He was almost giggling in excitement. "You're gonna be my pretend girlfriend."

There was nothing that she could think to say to this, so she didn't. Rogue just stood there, blinking perplexedly at the man in front of her. He wanted her to pretend to be his girlfriend. Why, was the first question that she should probably ask.

"Why?" she asked.

"It's all part of my master plan, see? My sheila's all, 'it's over John, we can't be together anymore', and she's goin around, actin all normal-like as if it isn't botherin her as much as it's botherin me."

Rogue continued to blink. "What's botherin you?"

"Well see here," he thrust a thumb at his chest. "She broke my heart. At first we was all happy and together and doin cute mushy stuff, and then she said we couldn't be together anymore! I dunno why! Prolly cause we got all hot an' heavy down by the lake and she's a bit fragile, like emotionally and stuff and she doesn't lemme get very close."

"I can't imagine why."

"Yeah, I know! An' after that she got to where she was pullin' away from me, all emotional-like, mind you, the physical stuff she was a-okay with."

"That's more than I wanted to know."

"Right, so we broke up, she left me an' now I want her back." Now his evil grin returned. "An' you, Roguey, are gonna help me get her."

Rogue shuddered. He really was evil. "How is pretendin' that I'm your girlfriend gonna get her back?"

He shrugged, as though the answer was obvious. "Seeing you with me will drive her mad with jealousy."

That was the stupidest thing she had ever heard. How would making her jealous do anything to make her want Pyro? Who was she? And how had Pyro gotten her to date him? Whoever she was, Rogue figured that she must either be certifiably insane or had been through some life-changing trauma in her life to be able to put up with Pyro. The man was crazy. A good kisser, but crazy.

Now she was worried. Not because of the situation she found herself in, not because of the certain repercussions of his kiss in the restaurant (her team-mates were not going to approve of her 'dating' Pyro), and not because she had enjoyed said kiss. Rogue was worried for one reason. She was worried because every time she thought of that kiss, for some wild reason, her mind went straight to Remy.

Already she had known that her crush had returned. For days she had been trying to squash it while picturing Remy in several Victorian style dresses and wigs. But that always ended with her telling him how ridiculous he looked, so he took them off and then he was naked...

Needless to say, she hadn't been able to shake herself of this stupid crush. And being kissed by Pyro had reminded her of all the feelings that she had been pushing down. Not only was being attracted to Remy bad because he was in love with someone else, but it was bad because...she didn't want to be attracted to Remy. Their friendship meant more to her than a stupid crush ever could. He didn't feel that way about her. And she couldn't betray their friendship by feeling that way about him. She wouldn't!

What she really didn't want to do at the moment was pretend to be Pyro's girlfriend. Her team-mates would freak. Her brother would freak. Even Remy would probably freak. That...was a thought that didn't bother her so much. At this point she was so tired of hearing about Jessica, she was willing to do anything to annoy him in retaliation. Rogue really, really hated that girl, even if she couldn't say why.

It took all her willpower to keep herself from sighing. "Fine."

The redhead's eyes lit up.

"But I got ground rules." She warned him. "No more kissing like that. Pecks are fine now and then but keep your tongue to yourself."

"Wowser." He muttered.

She ignored him. "And I ain't doin this all summer. You've got a week to 'drive her mad with jealously'."

"Give me two."

"You've got one."

"Two?"

"One."

"Two and a half."

"What? That's more than two! You're only gettin one."

"Fine, fine, gimme one and three days."

"You've got one week."

John glared. "You're no fun, Roguey."

"Right." She rolled her eyes. "I'm gonna walk home now."

After exchanging numbers (Rogue was very tempted to give him Wolverine's instead), they went their separate ways.

~X~

Remy LeBeau had never thought of himself as a jealous type man. This was probably because he had never been jealous of anyone before. Usually if he wanted something, he took it, whether he had permission to or not. Was getting mad at John for kissing Rogue jealousy? If so, then that added one more problem to his plate. He couldn't take Rogue, no matter how much he might want to. So it was the alternative that he must turn to.

Kick Pyro's ass.

And that was exactly what he had in mind as he stalked out of the restaurant, escaping Kurt (who barely noticed since Kitty was comfortingly rubbing Jack's arm), and marching around to the sidewalk. But then he heard the most peculiar conversation.

"You're gonna be my pretend girlfriend."

This should have made him feel better. It should matter that Rogue wasn't actually interested in that psychotic deviant. But all hearing this conversation really did for Remy was give him the uncontrollable desire to run over there and rip John's shirt off.

...and...that...sounded wrong, even to him. He only wanted rip his shirt off because that was John's favorite shirt and John would probably cry if anything happened to it. Not because he wanted to do...weird stuff to John. He only wanted to rip his shirt off.

Trying to rid himself of this ridiculously stupid train of thought, Remy's eyes narrowed in displeasure as Rogue handed over her phone number. Even she didn't look too happy about this.

Finally they headed in separate directions. Rogue walked the sidewalk in the direction of the house. John started to walk down the opposite side, but then quickly became distracted by a firefly fluttering about his head and he started chasing it, trying to catch it.

That's when Remy swooped in and delivered a round-house kick, aiming straight for his orange head. Pyro smoothly caught the firefly in one hand and turning at the last second, blocked with the other. Gripping onto the bottom of his boot, Pyro took a moment to examine Remy's face.

"Hiya, Rems!" he said delightedly and dropped the foot from his hand. "Watcha doin here, mate?"

Letting his foot drop gracefully, Remy turned and switched legs, aiming a kick at the other man's chest. Without missing a beat, John cupped two protective hands around the bug and jumped backwards, feet sliding as he landed.

"Oi, now!" he glared. "Watch out for Sallyfly!" Gazing lovingly into his own hands, Pyro ducked under Remy's fist as he murmured. "Poor Sallyfly, Rems is so mean to us." He rolled under Remy's next swing, sprang upwards, and started running. "Don't know why, though, he wasn't this mean before."

Remy was only getting more irritated by the second. There was a little bit of dry sand under an awning on the sidewalk in front of him. Putting a little charge into them (just a little one) he grinned and kicked them at John's retreating back. Once some of it hit it's intended target, all the little grains exploded like tiny little firecrackers. John screeched and then tripped over his own shoestrings.

He didn't get up to run, but lifted his hands up and opened them, screaming, "Go, Sallyfly! Fly away and into the arms of destiny! We weren't meant to be together tonight, love, but we'll find each other in this life or the next. Go, now, Sallyfly, GOOOOOO!"

Remy's cheeks turned ruddy. He had forgotten how embarrassing John could be. He cast an eye around them and everyone nearby had turned to watch them. Wonderful.

"We're practicin' for a play." he explained, hoping they would buy it.

There wasn't any time to see if they had, though, since John was on his feet again and running. Remy started to chase after him—and then his phone rang. He stopped when he saw Scott's name on the caller-id.

"Yeah?" he answered impatiently.

"Remy, good." Scott replied curtly. "I need you to come down to the docks, right away. Jean and I have found out some very important information that I think we all need to know."

Remy was torn. Should he go down to the docks and meet up with Scott, or chase after Pyro and kick his ass? It wasn't a very hard decision. He knew that he had to do the right thing.

Without saying a word, Remy hung up on Scott and ran after John.

~X~

It was some time before all of the X-men were finally gathered down on the docks, something that Scott was none too pleased about. Plus, the only ones who remembered to put on their uniforms was himself and Jean. Great, now they were all going to be mismatched and look likes total dorks!

But Scott wasn't going to let it get to him. Tonight was a good night. He and Jean had finally had a breakthrough on the case. They might have used some unorthodox methods in obtaining some of the information that they did, but it was theirs nonetheless. They had been so excited when they had first found everything out, that he and Jean had run straight home and changed into their uniforms and then driven down here to the docks when they found no one at the beach house, and called everyone.

Slowly, over the course of an hour, they had all shown up. Somehow he managed to refrain from asking why they were all so late. Partly because he could kind of guess, and partly because he really didn't want to know.

Tabitha and Amara had shown up first. Both of them were dressed head to toe in black matching outfits and were covered in sweat and soot. He didn't want to know. Kitty and Kurt had shown up next. Strangely, both of them looked very flushed with messy clothes, but angry with one another, if the crossed arms and glares they were shooting at each other were anything to go by. Scott could kind of guess.

Next was Rogue, who strolled up casually with a look on her face that indicated a less-than-stellar night. This in itself wasn't out of the ordinary. Scott could guess. Last was Remy, who walked up just as carefree as Rogue had. But Remy was covered in sweat, bruises, scrapes, blood, and was smirking in a very appeased manner. Scott definitely did not want to know.

"Good." he nodded his head in approval. "You're all here. And I called you all here for a good reason. As I told some of you on the phone, there's been a breakthrough in the case. I'm sure you all remember that Jean and I were going out this evening to investigate at some of the local stores that might have sold that boat we found at the crime scene. Well, we found what we were looking for. Someone at the last store we visited remembered selling someone a rowboat that fit the description that Remy gave us of the perps."

Everyone looked to Remy. Halting in wiping the blood off of his face, he seemed to think for a minute before he shrugged. "Don't remember."

Everyone looked back to Scott, who was trying not to look at all of them. "Well, in his mission report, Remy happened to mention that the woman that approached them was...well endowed." Awkwardly, he cleared his throat. "The young man at the last shop informed us that he hadn't sold anyone 'suspicious' a rowboat, but that he had sold one to a...uh..."

"Big breasted chick," Jean put in helpfully in what they all hoped was the store employee's exact wording and not her own.

"Right. So Jean and I did some research and we managed to find out where the woman had the boat delivered."

"You did some research?" Tabitha said questioningly.

Jean tapped her temple, a guilty look covering her face. "I might have cheated a little. Got him to look up the address on his computer."

Scott only looked slightly sorry about this before he shook it off. "So I figure we'll all go there now and then work out a plan from there. Sound good?"

They all grumbled in response, except for Remy, who happily answered with a, "Yep." and a bright smile.

No one asked. They didn't want to know.

~X~

After an unusually quiet car ride, they drove up to an abandoned warehouse in the middle of nowhere.

Kitty took a moment away from scowling at Kurt to gaze out of the window. "Why do the bad guys like, always head straight for the abandoned warehouse?"

"Haven't you ever noticed it, Kitty?" Tabitha leaned forward and poked Kitty in the back of the head. "That there's something sinister about abandoned warehouses? And you know, I think I might have heard from the townsfolk that this one's haunted."

"Is not." Kitty spoke as if she didn't believe her, but suddenly she looked uncomfortable. "What do they say about it?"

"Oh, I don't know," Tabitha stretched lazily. "Something about a kid getting his head chopped off."

"What!" Kitty squeaked, her voice betraying how nervous this made her.

"Yeah, and if anyone dares to go in, he chops their head off too and saves it for his collection."

"What!"

"Alright everyone," Scott interrupted. "Stop goofing around, we're here." He parked the van behind a large dumpster. "This place seems like it'll probably take us some time to search the entire thing, so we'll split into our usual teams, since that's who seems to work best together."

"No!" Kitty and Kurt both shouted at the same time.

Kurt crossed his arms and looked out of the window. "I won't work with her."

"And I won't work with him." Kitty crossed her arms and looked out of the other window.

Scott let loose a long-suffering sigh. "Fine. Kitty, you and I will go together and Kurt you go with Jean."

This seemed to suit both of them so they all climbed out of the van and went their separate ways.

Now, as they walked together around to the back of the warehouse, Rogue was trying to think of something to say to Remy. It shouldn't have been that hard. Remy was her best friend, after all. But now, more than ever, she felt a sense of guilt over her new feelings for him and she felt...uncomfortable being around him while not ripping his clothes off and ravishing him.

Ok, maybe ravish wasn't the right word. She would probably just rip his clothes off and do stuff like bite him and lick him and...so maybe ravish was the right word after all.

Seriously, when did he start looking like that? He had always been handsome but he had never looked like that before. Rogue suppressed a groan. She would have liked to blame that witch, Jessica on her not being able to have Remy now, but she knew deep down that it wasn't her fault. Even if there wasn't any Jessica, she would probably still be stuck here crushing on Remy and not doing anything about it. She was too big of a wuss to do anything about it. Not only that, but there was always the possibility that if she and Remy ever were to get together, that it wouldn't work out. And then where would they be? Single and friendless.

She didn't like that scenario.

So maybe there was another one. Maybe this was just a brief thing and it would go away in time. Maybe she didn't have a crush on Remy at all, maybe she just felt threatened by Jessica because she was afraid that the other woman would take her friend away. Rogue quickly threw that option off of the proverbial table. Her imagination had gone to too many places the past few days for her to be able to believe that. That left the last option in her head. Maybe this was something that she needed to get out of her system. Maybe she needed to re-create the scene that had gotten her into this fix in the first place. It shouldn't be too hard. They were here investigating this warehouse, the opportunity might arise. Maybe she needed to kiss Remy and maybe that would be enough for her.

Maybe she was still too big a wuss to pull that off.

And then there was the whole unbelievability aspect of it. Two mutants kissing on the beach was one thing; That they could buy. But two mutants kissing in the warehouse that was probably their base of operations? They probably wouldn't buy that one.

So feeling a bit miserable with herself, Rogue kept her mouth closed and followed Remy inside of the back door, the metal creaking as he slid it open. Once they were in with the door closed behind them, they automatically figured that no one was home, if the near pitch-black darkness was anything to go by.

The moonlight filtered in through the tall, grimy windows, offering them a little light to work with, enough so that they could see that the room they had entered into was huge, (probably bigger than the whole beach house) and was stacked with boxes upon boxes.

As they made their way through the sea of cardboard, Rogue kept close to Remy, hoping that there weren't any rats in here.

"How'd your date go?" He whispered, jolting her out of thoughts of giant rats coming to kill them.

Needless to say, she was grateful for the interruption. Except when she actually remembered how her date had gone. It would be easy to just tell him that it went bad, but Kitty would probably tell everybody what had actually happened later.

"Your old friend Pyro showed up." She bit her lip, wondering if she should tell him about the deal she had made with Pyro. Initially she had planned on using it to annoy him. Now she realized how childish that was. Just like how Pyro's 'I'll drive her mad with jealously' plan was. She didn't want to be like that, and she didn't want to be a liar.

Remy had stopped to squint at her through the darkness. "Pyro? What did he want?"

"Well," she sighed, knowing that she couldn't lie to him. "I ran into him and we sort of made a deal. But first I'll tell you about the idiot I was on a date with." In a hushed tone she told of the horror that was her date, taking care to stick close as they picked their way through the maze of boxes. "And so we made a deal. He said that he'd get me out of there if I did him a favor. I didn't know til' later that he wants me to pretend to be his girlfriend."

They came to a standstill behind a particularly large pile of boxes. Remy moved to face her and even through the dim light she could take in the odd look on his face. She wondered what it meant.

"Why?"

"He wants to make his ex jealous." She rolled her eyes. "For some reason he thinks it'll make her come back. He said somethin about driving her mad with jealously."

"Speakin o' which." He took two steps closer to her and lifted a hand.

Then he was coming closer and closer, for some reason her heart was racing and her palms were sweaty. The last time they had been this close, he had kissed her. Was that what he was doing now? Unconsciously, Rogue leaned forward. Her eyelids drooped and her mouth parted...

and Remy plucked a leaf from her hair and moved away again. "Ya got a leaf in your hair."

Eye's snapping open, her back jumped back into a straight position. That was...stupid. Swallowing down the million curse words that threatened to escape, she asked in a strangled whisper, "How was that a speakin' of which?"

"It wasn't." He shrugged and started moving away.

She really considered killing him right then.

While she was seriously debating it, lost in the imaginary world where everything always went her way, she missed the noise of another door opening. Before she could blink she was pressed up against the giant stack of boxes, the hard wall of Remy's chest trapping her.

Never had she spared more than a few moments of thought on a man, except for those two weeks when she had liked Scott. But that crush was on a different spectrum than this one. It simply wasn't the same. She really freaking hated it.

Slowly Remy moved a finger to his lips and made a small shushing sound. Somehow she was able to hear over her own beating heart. Someone was walking into the warehouse, on the other side of the mountain of boxes they stood behind and talking loudly. Her heart sank when she heard that voice. They both knew who that was.

"Oi now, don't get your knickers in a twist, mate. I told ya' I'm makin' it right. Yeah." he stopped to listen and if they strained hard enough they could hear a muffled voice coming from (what they supposed) was his phone. "Yeah, gotcha. Ok. Ok. Ok. Ok...ok. See ya then." There was the sound of phone snapping shut and then Pyro muttering. "Smeg-head."

There was some shuffling around, then a slight grunt and they assumed a box had been lifted. Some more shuffling and then the door was opening and closing again, leaving them in silence.

Remy peeked around the stack of boxes to make certain that the coast was clear.

"I guess I'm in a mess now." Rogue whispered miserably. "Kitty saw us together. She's gonna tell everyone that I'm with him and no doubt Scott saw him in here too. Oh god," her eyes widened in realization. "He's going to want me to date Pyro, to get information!"

Remy took a half step back and head bowed, looked up at her from under his lashes. "You don't wanna date him?"

"Of course not." She said carelessly. "Ah jeeze, he probably really wants me to be his 'pretend girlfriend' so that he can get information out of me!"

"Just...whatever happens..." Rogue's gaze moved back to his own intense one. As their eyes locked, he spoke more seriously to her than he ever had before. "I'll keep an eye out for you. I won't let him hurt you."

A breath of gratitude fell from her mouth. "Why...why would you say that?"

"Don't you know it by now, chére?" he grinned her favorite grin, the one that showed off his dimple. "Your fights are my fights."

And it was right then. Why it was right at that moment, Rogue couldn't say. But suddenly she realized it. How silly she was for not seeing it or understanding it sooner.

That was Remy.

Remy, her best friend. The guy that made her laugh and made her angry, made her feel, made her feel normal and like maybe she was worth something. He was always there. There when she was sad and needing cheering up. There when she was wrong about something and was willing to argue with her. He was there when she needed saving and there when she didn't want to be saved. Good days and bad days, hard days and easygoing days. He was always there. Always by her side.

How stupid she was. How blind could she possibly be? She wasn't attracted to Remy because of a kiss or because she felt threatened by another woman. And she wasn't just attracted to this man. Somehow she knew that all along that had been the case. Seven months ago when he had shown up on their doorstep she had known it. But her heart had refused to believe it, had pushed it away. She had immediately hated him for the way that he made her feel. Then it had changed. They had become friends and somehow her mind had labeled that feeling as friendship. But it was more. Remy wasn't just her friend and he wasn't the man that she was crushing on.

Remy was the man that she loved.

"Rogue?" Remy's head was tilted to the side in a questioning gesture. "You ok?"

To Be Continued...