Okay, so this happened fast! I've been reading up since Gambit's first appearance in the X-Men, and decided to take a swerve and read his solos first. Just started Nicieza's run on him, and #5 really stuck with me. I literally typed this shit out in a matter of like, two hours on my phone while my hurricane of a mother-in-law was in town. Hope you enjoy it!
Also, to all of you who have read and commented on anything of mine recently, or sent me messages-I haven't forgotten you! Just had company:) I'll be responding to y'all this evening!
"Yup, for sure, but gettin' the mouse into the maze is one thing… an' gettin' him to run it is a whole 'nother matter." —Rogue, Gambit (1999), #5
She contemplates the woman staring back at her in the mirror. Luxuriant red curls, shot white over the top. Vibrant green eyes. Dramatic, soft features in a squarish face. Good, thick creamy skin. A sleek, curvaceous figure in peak physical condition.
She supposes she is beautiful. Men, and more than a few women, have certainly thought so. One man, in particular, has never left room for doubt in that quarter, and she loves him. He's in love with her, too (or he was? She's not certain on that score anymore..), but to what goddamned end?
She flattens her mouth and reaches for the magenta swimsuit she'd brought into the dressing room. A bikini, something she can't even wear. And in his signature color, no less.
Nope, definitely can't wear it, and most certainly not for him. With all the utter crap between them, piled on top of her inability to touch? HAH!
She steadfastly ignores her reflection as she pulls the stringed top over her breasts, adjusting the cups and tying the strings. She can't help but imagine his fingers deftly untying them instead, and she goes ahead to indulge the fantasy a bit.
She loves his hands, loves to watch them, loves them on her. Wide, fingers long, touch sensitive in spite of hardened callouses. Movements intuitive, graceful. Intent giving, clever.
She's only ever known his hands (physically, anyway—mentally, she's known quite a few more, but that… that is an entirely different story), but it doesn't exactly take a genius to know she'd hit jackpot with him.
At least, in that regard. Others…
Well, as is everything with her, that's also an entirely different story.
She slips on the bottoms. The ties are too loose. She pulls the strings on one hip, adjusts. Goes to do the same on the other side, and makes the mistake of glancing up in the mirror.
She freezes, hands stock still at the strings. Sees the sheer lie over the truth, and immediately starts shoving the garment off of herself. Away.
She can't do this, play at normal. She isn't normal, she can't do normal things. Like wear a gorgeous swimsuit she feels pretty in for a man who she wants to take it off of her.
(She's not even sure he'd do it if she asked him to. Not anymore.)
She yanks on her leggings, her athletic top. Pulls on her boots, tugs up the laces maybe too tight. Ignores the girl in the mirror. She's the truth to her lie, and she doesn't want to look at her.
To what goddamned end, anyway?
" 'Scuse me," she bites out at the sales lady blocking her way out of the dressing room. She doesn't even look at the other woman. No eye contact, because she has no patience and wants to be left alone— "what the hell?"
She's just spotted the green glowing contraption at her feet, and she immediately snaps to alarm, aware it's already too late— "what're you—?"
The woman makes no faces, her eyes are flat. Her hand raised with some...thing...to go with the thing at her feet, also sparking green—
She slowly comes to, her consciousness sluggish, too damn sluggish, she was attacked—!
A groan threatens up out of her throat, and she instinctively tamps that down as her eyes finally flutter open.
Bright lights tear up her eyes, and she squints, holding herself still, quiet, and ready as she takes stock. Trapped in some metal outfit, no power nullifier that she can tell. Her attacker sitting at a control center, paying her no mind—
"Rogue."
She throws a sharp look in the direction of that voice, and her mouth twists as her blood runs to ice. "Executioner?"
Shit. Shit shit shit shitshitshit. She knows of him, and she immediately realizes why she's here, she's—
"You deserve better than being used as bait, but then I deserve better than having to use you this way."
—bait.
Goddammit, he'll kill him, he'll kill Remy— "I'm feelin' so sympathetic right now," she quips with cool roll of her eyes. She refuses to let him see her horror, her truth. Because maybe if she feeds him a lie, and maybe if she believes it with him, it'll become a truth, and Remy won't—
"I'm sure," he chuckles, a hollow sound she hates as it traps in his mask. She flicks her lashes at him and swears she'll tear his eyes from his head the first chance she gets.
"Well, you couldn'ta picked an easier target t' lure into a trap, sugar," she grunts at him in not-so-feigned irritation.
"Remy LeBeau is reckless. He will take the bait."
"Hmm," she hums dismissively, quietly testing her bounds. She mentally cusses a blazing blue streak when she feels no give. Not just any metal, then, it's reinforced with something meant to hold people like her.
She'd figured as much, but it never hurt a captive to check her captor's smarts.
"Well," she finally deigns to answer him, "gettin' the mouse into the maze is one thing. Gettin' him to run it is a whole 'nother matter."
"All by his lonesome?" She stares at the screen, eyes frantically darting around the man just spat through the portal mere moments before. Looking for help. Anyone to help him. "Gee, woulda thought some of the other X boys might've joined in to help rescue a proper Southern damsel in distress."
Oh god, had they really sent him in alone? Because surely the idiot hadn't struck out by himself with no one else in the know?
The Executioner goes on about something like the portal gate was set up to only take Remy, which does nothing to calm her nerves as she remains locked in on the beautiful man picking himself up off the ground.
She loves him. She sometimes wishes she didn't. Easier that way. She also wishes shit wasn't so sour between them. She wishes she could go in and scrape out the Antarctica incident from between them. She wishes…
She frowns and slaps down the fear scrabbling up her throat, fear that Remy is well and truly in a trap he probably won't get out of, and nearly chokes when the screen glitches and goes to static.
She flings a daggered glare at her captor, and snarls at him. "Makin' him run through your hoops?"
"The scrambled feed just now wasn't my doing," he snaps back at her, clearly annoyed, "and as for hoops, well. That's to appease my firing squad."
"Thought the Executioner only went for mutants who have committed murder?" She sneers at him, poking at holes she knows don't exist but hopes he isn't so sure.
"Can you say for a fact that you know LeBeau hasn't?" He counters over his shoulder, and she imagines a brow popped in curiosity under that ridiculous mask.
She hates him. She wants to kill him. She just might, too, if he gets Remy. Then she supposes she can't take a higher ground over that Cajun rat after that. Equal footing, then.
Which is a lie. They've stood on that level all along. She's no saint, either.
Her eyes go back to the screen, watching the stupid love of her stupid life step into a room full of eyeballs—
"Hey! Y' heads ain't supposed to hit the walls. Now, how the fuck'm I gonna ask y'all where my Roguey's at?"
She doesn't bother hiding a gasping laugh as Remy's voice jokes through the feed, as he throws his trademark smirk into a camera he'd clearly been showing out for.
And show out, he had! She'd watched him fight the Executioner's henchman, her heart in her throat the whole while as he'd flipped, jumped, kicked, and ran his mouth through the whole shebang. Watched him take his hits, get slammed to the ground, and come back up grinning and nose bleeding as he'd set off delayed cards slipped into strategic spots on his opponents.
The man has style, always has. And he can make her heart pitter-patter out of her chest. He's always done that, too.
She's smug as she watches the screen show the others up KO'd, and she's so happy and relieved, she can't help it. "Sayin' I told you so is beneath my dignity," she drawls out as the Executioner blows a sigh through his nose, "so instead, I'll just say this!" And she blows him a big, spitty raspberry in very mature fashion.
And Remy, bless his stylish soul, unknowingly gives her a beat to let that raspberry have its moment, and then chooses the next to blow out a wall and make his entrance.
Her breath and heart both crash still in her chest as she watches that man stride in, cocky as ever, smirk in place, staff slung over his shoulders. Looking for the world like this all a game, but for the brief flash in his eyes as they cross her face, the only tell that it isn't a game to him at all.
Stunning man.
She's always loved him. Still does. Probably always will.
Stupid girl.
She knows better. But she's riveted on him just now all the same, watching his arrogance fall off in a jump as he swerves the Executioner's aim, and the real fight begins…
"Remy— oh fuck, sugar…" She struggles in her binds, her eyes fixed on her ex's prone body. He'd gotten careless, forgotten that security is always highest around the prize, and had raced headlong into the synaptic scrambler surrounding her.
And now, he's a twitching mess at her feet, his fire-bright eyes trying to focus on her. But he can't do even that, every nerve in his body slapped, fried, his body jerking and trying to curl in on itself in pain.
She swallows her panic as the Executioner strides forward, kicks him over. Remy hisses and contracts, and her heart throbs for him. He's hurt, because of her, and he doesn't deserve it.
He hadn't before, either...
The Executioner puts up his lance at Remy's head, and she…
Rogue jumps awake, instinctively swallowing a scream, and reaches for the man who should be beside her.
He is. He is, he is,he is!
She sniffs back a sob as she practically rolls on top of him, raining soft kisses across his shoulders, between his shoulderblades. She slips her arms around him, hands under him, palms flattened up to his chest. She buries her face in his back, closes her eyes, and lets the steady rise and fall of his breathing calm her down.
Crap, she hates that dream. Hates it. That day hadn't been their worst, nor had it been their closest brush with death. But it had been the first time she'd fully realized something.
She'd realized that she was his weakness, his chink in the armor. She'd realized that if you wanted to get at the unflappable, happy-go-lucky (...), rolling stone Remy LeBeau, she was how you went about it.
The idiot could turn completely reckless, desperate, throw himself away to get to her. He'd get himself killed trying it, too, and wouldn't think twice for it.
That kind of unswerving loyalty…!
From him, not easily won, or given. That she'd come so close to losing out, to tossing him to the can like yesterday's garbage, because it'd scared her, that kind of intensity, that kind of loyalty, that kind of love...
She squeezes stinging eyes into his skin as she remembers after the ordeal, after they'd tumbled back through the stargate. Both hurting, her, charred and reddened with burns from a direct, up-close hit by the lance, and him, his body still jerking in rapid-fire spasms from being scrambled. And he was turned in toward her, reaching for her, eyes bright and intense on her, his expression stopping her world just then and saying everything…
She drops light kisses up his spine, up the side of his neck, over his cheek, the corner of his mouth. He stirs, his back flexing tight as he stretches flat on his belly, his slitted, drowsy eyes a dim red in the dark.
"Firefly eyes," she murmurs with a soft smile against his mouth, kissing him again. He hums low, his voice gravelly with sleep, his lips twitching up in some kind of kiss back, but his eyes are already rolling back up, and he's already drifting back off into his pillow.
"I love you, too, Remy LeBeau," she whispers into his cheek, "so damn much. Always have." She fingers the nearly three carats' worth of canary diamond on her finger. "Always will, shug."
He drools and then smacks his lips, and she giggles softly, kissing him again before moving off of him to lift up his arm. He shifts just enough to let her snuggle up under him, eyes closed the whole while as he settles over her, head on her chest, arms circling under her, a long, heavy leg tangling in with hers.
She smiles, arms already around him, fingers threading through his hair. She leans up and kisses the top of his head. "I'd run a stupid mousetrap for you, too, swamp rat."
"Hmmmrrnnnmmm?" He mumbles against her breasts, and she giggles into another lipsmack on his head. "I said, don't get caught in anymore mousetraps, sugar."
"...'ma rat. Bigger'n a m-mousetrmmmmnn…"
"That, you are," she murmurs to the man face-smooshed into her chest, "that, you are."
She lays her head back and closes her eyes, still smiling.
Because thank the good lord above that Remy LeBeau's a rat bigger than a mousetrap.