Gaping Chest Wounds - REVIEW THIS STORY

Written by Lucia de’Medici
Last updated: 08/04/2008 10:16:27 PM

Chapter 1

Hump day. The day Bobby wrested the title of "Practical Joker" from Kurt with a stunning display of stupidity involving a misplaced aftershave bottle, a pair of missing ruby quartz glasses, a quart of vinegar, and Scott’s freshly shaven face. The day Kitty forgot to put up the parking break on the X-van, and the whole darned thing made a flapjack out of Logan’s bike. The day the Cajun chose to show up in the living room, his feet already propped on the coffee table, his only worldly possession - his trench coat - already decorating the coat rack in the front hall.

The coat was on Rogue’s hanger, the coffee table had her forgotten Art History assignment on it, along with a Pollock-inspired spattering of Coca-Cola, and the Cajun was in her spot on the couch.

Too stunned to say anything, the moment in which Remy turned halfway to greet her staring, gaping, awkward surprise was the one in which she didn’t manage any of the casual, indifferent responses she’d rehearsed for this moment (nor any of the brutal reprimands that she’d practiced afterwards). Instead, he got the first word, the first smirk, and the first torpid, head to toe appraisal before she could beat him to the punch:

"Y’ cut your hair."

And instead of a scathing retort, Rogue found herself self-consciously reaching for her brand new, insisted-upon-by-Kitty Pryde pageboy that stopped just below her chin and still felt too awkward and too short to be remotely as mature and sophisticated and edgy as Kitty had promised.

Wednesday drew to an abrupt end with a Rogue-sized escape hole punched into the ceiling, the slam of her bedroom door, and a raggedy bandana tied so tightly behind her ears that Rogue couldn’t be sure if it was Carol giving her a migraine or the makeshift tignon.

Thursday started sometime around three in the afternoon, and with the brief disorientation experienced by those who only contemplate the owner of the bed they’re presently lying in - ’cause surely, it ain’t theirs, and surely you’ve overslept if the spot next to you is already empty...

Except that Remy LeBeau was presently lying half-off a twin that barely contained his sprawling limbs, and the person nearest to him was familiar and completely uncharacteristic of his preferred company: she was wearing pink, for one thing.

Her elbows on her knees, her hands linked together, she surveyed him with an openness that he found both rare in teenagers her age, and not to mention, a little unsettling.

"Finally. I’ve been waiting for you to wake up for like, hours now."

Sacre dieu, merde et merde encore, what had he done?

Remy blinked, tried for a suave smile, and Kitty rolled her eyes. "Ew. No." She adjusted her legs beneath her on the bed of his roommate - wouldn’t you know, Colossus hadn’t immigrated after all - and fixed her attention anywhere but his body as he sat up and the sheet slid off his torso.

She pointed at the bedside table, to a small, painted portrait of her and the Russian. "I wasn’t deliberately trying to be creepy. I just happen to have permanent invitation and all-access pass to this room."

"What Wolvie don’t know -"

She beamed. "I knew this was going to be easy. Pietro said you were smart... Well, ’smarter than your own good’, actually, but that’s just details -"

"What’s that?" he asked, vaguely disinterested by the mention of Magneto’s spawn as he searched for his pants. Pants then coffee. Yes.

"Oh, you know, we can skip all the expected pleasantries since, you know, we were never really on a first name basis - though I think that makes this easier, on whole..."

Dieu, was she babbling? Forget the pants. Maybe just coffee, he thought.

"...Because it could be misconstrued as being a bit of a touchy subject - no pun intended and I don’t mean to be, like, invasive or anything..."

He rifled around through the detritus on the floor. Cigarettes. Playing cards. Sock. Sock.

Belt buckle. A quarter. Ah ha! Success! Ah, no. False alarm. His tee-shirt.

"...But you really need to not do what you’re doing anymore." She sucked in an audible mouthful of air. (So Kitty Pryde did breathe. Incroyable.)

"She’s been perfectly fine for the past eight months, three weeks, and four days. She even went on a date with John not so long ago - not that it went well, but that’s besides the point - Rogue was over you, Remy. Until you showed up yesterday and made fun of her hair, that is."

Remy jerked upright, his desire to find his boxers temporarily forgotten, though in the time it took to demand, "Quoi?" he’d already found himself face-first into the carpeting, half-tangled by a sheet that seemed to want to do him in before breakfast, with his left ass cheek cooling to the breeze.

He hadn’t been aware that there had been anything to get over, quite frankly. Frowning, he added a mental caveat: nothing more than the usual heartache, that is.

Shifting to his side, then rolling onto his back, he stared at the ceiling fan for a beat.

Raising an eyebrow, more for himself than for Kitty’s benefit, he asked disparagingly, "John?"

Kitty’s head popped over the side of the bed, nodding matter-of-factly. "He’s grown into his ears."

"But not his psychosis, I’d wager," he deadpanned.

St. John Allerdyce. Remy frowned. St. John Allerdyce? The hell was Rogue thinking? He struggled with the image of the scraggly, smelly Australian and the sleek, hard goth snuggled down into the back of Lance’s commandeered jeep at the drive-in, a blanket tossed around Rogue’s shoulders, Pyro’s arm over the blanket. Remy felt his left eyebrow twitch. He imagined the pair of them having dinner at some swank restaurant, the candles at their table lovingly shaped into swans, swimming over their heads - until a drape would catch fire and Pyro got them kicked out. He imagined the same restaurant, minutes later, a pile of smoking cinders, Rogue with her arms folded across her chest and giving the Australian a pursed-lip, playful pout of disapproval. Remy imagined her hip canted to the right, the sublime curve of her thigh a smooth, inviting line, the way her arms pushed her breasts up and together just an inch -

Remy glanced up at Kitty, and shifted the sheet more securely over his lap.

Training kept his expression nonplussed, but he regarded Kitty’s shrewd inspection with something closing in on dread.

"What am I doing now?"

"You don’t know, do you?" she asked, a mischievous grin tugging at the corners of her mouth. She flopped onto her stomach, kicking her feet in the air behind her, her chin resting on the heels of her hands.

Remy knew one thing: St. John Allerdyce was a dead man.

"She waited for you."

Didn’t damn well sound like it, he thought. Waiting didn’t usually consist of dating desperate, skinny losers who smelled like gasoline, vap-o-rub and fruity hairspray. Reaching for the nearest available scrap of his clothing, he pulled on his shirt with more fore than necessary.

"That’s so cute!" Kitty cried, clapping her hands together. "You’re brooding!"

Remy gave her a quelling look. "Part of m’ charming persona."

She paused, seeming to come to a conclusion with a nod of her head, the bounce of her ponytail, and a megawatt smile that seemed to indicate she’d made a very big decision in a very short amount of time.

"So?"

"So what?"

"What are you going to do about causing Rogue such grievous, insane mega personal injury?"

Rogue felt that way? He hadn’t even considered... Remy sat up, adjusting his tee-shirt absently. All he’d done was leave her a card.

Raising an eyebrow as if to ask if Kitty was serious, she nodded gravely.

"She never liked me, you know," he ventured, recalling the few moments of privacy they’d shared, seemingly a lifetime ago. "Knocked my ass flat a few times." A few times he remembered with the clarity and sharpness of a blade pressed to the soft spot beneath his ribcage. All it took was a little pressure, and he could bring those moments back with all their old stinging.

Rolling her eyes, she muttered, "Yeah, I’ve heard about those ’few times’ a few more than a few. I think I can live without a recap."

Rogue talked about their time in the Big Easy? Really?

"Yeah," Kitty said, wide-eyed and a little pink in the tips of her ears.

Well. That gave new meaning to the phrase, "Playing hard to get." Funny thing, for all Remy’s flare and talk of taking chances, he hadn’t ever known there were stakes actually worth playing for.

Kitty shrugged. "You could have texted her: You know it takes a whole lot less to show a person you care these days. Three little letters. Two if you’re really creative."

Two letters, huh? Remy wet his lips. "I think Gambit can do better ’n that, p’tit."

Forgetting about his sheet and standing, Remy turned and started striding towards the door. Kitty made a startled noise in the back of her throat.

"Uhm? Like... Whoa." She gestured vaguely as he turned, unable to look away but clearly embarrassed. "Like. Like. Like."

"Oh, I know y’ do, girl. But you’re gonna have t’ keep the ’liking’ to what y’ see without touchin’." He winked, picking up the nearest pair of jeans he could set his hands on and stepping into them. "Let’s not mention m’ missing laundry, hein?" he said, zipping himself up carefully.

Friday evening finds a cool breeze meandering across the Institute lawns. It’s heaviest on the roof where Rogue sits with her knees drawn up to her chest, right at the very edge of the eaves so that as night falls, people from the street sometimes mistake her for a gargoyle.

There are goosebumps raised on her forearms that she toys with errantly, letting her fingers warm her skin through her sleeves. She senses she isn’t alone, though Carol is mercifully comatose somewhere deep in her mind.

The wind carries the scent of his cigarette to her first, a mix of tobacco and clove, and she shuts her eyes briefly, remembering the smell, recognizing how its changed; how it hurts to recall, but in a good way.

He materializes just within the field of her peripheral vision like smoke, a billowing tower of man and muscle and leather. Cigarette in hand. The hem of his trench coat lifts, whispering a hymn to the falling darkness that remembers grazing tendrils of Spanish moss and the murky brown churn of swamp water. Fireflies in the night. A place where the serpentine hiss of gaslight is an irritatingly constant part of the ambiance.

It settles between them, and more; also left unsaid are the many moments that could have been shared, but were misplaced for reasons Rogue won’t ask for.

At first, neither of them say anything. Rogue turns away, resting her head on her arms, her gaze fixing on nothing in particular though her attention is anchored firmly on the closing distance between them, like she’s imagined it for the past few months.

"I’m sorry, chére."

Words she’s been waiting to hear for what feels like forever. They leave her unmoved; as cold as the strengthening wind.

"Careful, Remy. You might be growin’ a conscience."

"It’s a start."

Glancing in his direction, she takes note of his smile, but doesn’t raise her gaze to measure the sincerity in his eyes. If Gambit’s even capable of sincerity.

She shakes her head, frowning. Remy’s hands are loose at his sides, open, bare, empty. Like hers: with nothing to offer in them.

"Won’t work," she says. "There’s nothing you can possibly say after so long that would convince me that you’ve suddenly become someone new, that you don’t lie, that you don’t cheat, that you don’t steal -"

"That I’m not still a complete idiot."

She snorts. "That’s a fair constant, Ah think."

"You’ve got a good memory."

She turns to him then. "Ah’ve got a long memory, Cajun."

Grinning into his chest, he nods, finally making the approach to sit beside her. Remy’s legs hang off the side of the roof, his fingers folded together in his lap. "I know," he confesses, "I wanted t’ see if I remembered."

"What?"

He shrugs out of his jacket, eyeing her for a moment, taking in her stiff posture, the slight hunched roll to her shoulders. Remy gives her a pointed look, moving with deliberate care before Rogue can protest.

Stiffening on instinct, Rogue freezes as he settles the trench coat around her, drawing the lapels closed below her chin. He holds her there, frozen to the spot, his hands sliding to her shoulders where they settle - pressing the warmth of his body into her through the heavy jacket.

"How good this felt once," he murmurs. His tone loosens something in her; a place she thought had been long-since hollowed out.

Rogue wet her lower lip, suddenly unable to turn away from the intensity of his gaze, now that he’s caught her eye.

"You learn to care for someone with all your heart, and when they leave," she whispers, impulse overriding her pride, "you think they own that part of you, so they take it with them." She swallows. "And then all you’re left with is a gaping chest wound."

Remy grins - a hesitant little thing that is there and gone in a heartbeat - and looks down briefly. The weight of his hand sliding down her collarbone is smooth, deliberate in the way that he doesn’t release her from the circle of his arms.

"But you had it all along," he reminds her gently, the implication made clear as the card seemingly materializes from nothing.

She knows it, is familiar with it, has kept it with her constantly in the place where she’s needed it closest to her.

Rogue touches two fingers to her breastbone, and feels that the place where she’d held his Queen of Hearts between her bra and her skin is empty.

She doesn’t ask how, but gently, tentatively accepts as Remy presses his lips to hers for a bare fraction of a second, lingering only long enough to remember the moment, before it can become painful for either of them.

When Rogue next opens her eyes, Remy’s arm leans a little heavier on her shoulders, but he is smiling down at the card he’s pressed into her palm.

"I don’t think you’re gonna need that anymore," he tells her, pulling her closer and gesturing in a way that says she knows exactly what to do with the card, now that he’s promised, in his own way, that he’s here to stay:

Rogue doesn’t need to think about it, it rushes to her fingertips on instinct in a pulsing, thrumming spread of heat. In a moment, there is nothing to fall to the earth but ash, and this she scatters into the breeze, like there was no other place for it to go, and no other place for them to be to witness such a ceremony.

And it does feel good, she thinks; she feels whole again.

"I like your hair," he confesses, watching the lingering trails of ghostly light from the small explosion.

Well, Rogue thinks, brushing her fingers over split ends that aren’t there anymore, almost.