Title: Real People
Author: Viridian5 (Email)
Rating: NC-17
Pairing/main characters: Gambit/X-Man
Series/Sequel: sequel to Jump or Fall
Summary: Comicverse. Gambit and X-Man have a shower, breakfast, and each other.
Disclaimer: They belong to Marvel Enterprises, Inc., which wastes its time torturing and killing them. Make love, not war, man.
Archive/distribution: Yes.
Date: May 2002
Notes: Aided by Maya's mix tape, especially the Snake River Conspiracy, Skunk Anansie, 12 Rounds, and Jack Off Jill contributions. Thanks to Kasha for the read-through.
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Real People
By Viridian5
"I look at you through different eyes.
I never knew my thoughts televise what you think.
I'm the twin inside you.""Gender" by Orgy
Drowsy, Remy yawned and regarded his catch. Nate had been leaving, sneaking out, but asking him to stay and giving him some kisses had put an end to that right quick. Now Nate nestled asleep in bed, tangled in the sheets and tousled, next to him, passed out again. Remy got the feeling that Nate didn't sleep well usually so didn't get offended that his best efforts had sent Nate off to slumberland. Could kind of be a compliment actually, that Nate felt so comfortable with him.
Nate would wake up eventually.
Besides, Remy felt tired enough, familiar himself lately with disturbed sleep, that he might as well nod off too. He'd paid the hotel staff off well enough that they had several more hours of undisturbed wallowing due to them, and Remy didn't believe in leaving anything, *especially* wallowing, only half-done.
He touched the white streaks in Nate's brown hair and wondered what put them there, but didn't wonder too long. This was his vacation from angst, and it would be Nate's too. He'd make sure of that.
If Remy had a cat with cream type of smile on his face as he settled in next to Nate and closed his eyes, he figured it didn't matter, since it didn't hurt anyone.
****
Nate woke up entangled with Remy at two o' clock in the afternoon. Damn, he felt lazy. But he couldn't feel sorry for it. Especially not with Remy looking so peacefully asleep.
But as he walked to the bathroom to shower, he heard a honeyed voice purr from the bed, "You want company in dere?"
Nate panicked. He could admit that to himself. "Not yet!" he answered, and closed the door.
In the shower, he berated himself for his idiocy. He could still psi-call Remy in here, say he changed his mind and wanted a wake-up blowjob or something, without even getting out from under the water. But a large part of him still needed this shower alone, a few minutes of distance and solitude. He had Remy threaded too closely in himself already, too present.
He tried to ignore how the hot water beating at his skin kindled his lust for Remy further.
The delicate and difficult job of cleaning his clothing with telekinesis kept his mind off that anyway. He used it to dry himself too. Remy raised an eyebrow on seeing him walk out into the bedroom dry and completely groomed, but just said, "Sorry about dat. I'm told I can be a bit much."
"No problem. I just needed a few minutes of solitude."
"I get dat. I need dat too... once every five years or so. You're welcome to join *me* in de shower, if you like." Remy's voice mingled affection and lust.
"Not yet."
When Nate heard the water start up again, he couldn't help imagining Remy in it, stroking long fingers and skilled hands all along his long body... He felt it...
He was being an idiot.
Nate knocked on the door. "C'mon in," Remy shouted over the drumming of the water.
Nate stripped off his clothes and clambered into the tub, feeling clumsy next to Remy's effortless grace. But Remy drew him in close and drove away all feelings of awkwardness with touches and murmured words. The feel of the water pounding both their bodies made Nate lose track of who was touching whom. He and Remy both thought that the other looked too thin, though Remy was more ashamed over his own state. He seemed to think that he had a duty to the world to maintain his body. They stroked and kissed one another and got annoyed by the scent of the perfume in the hotel soap they used, preferring something more human. Nate knew, however, that the gifted tongue teasing somebody's skin had to be Remy's, because he just didn't have that kind of ability.
Nate had never been so aware of his skin before. It tingled and just about purred under all the stimulation. It all felt so good.
They stroked and kissed and thrust and slid against one another until the pleasure became unbearable, but release itself felt slow and almost gentle, a gradual easing down, a slide into orgasm. Then the water abruptly turned cold, making them both shriek.
Remy was holding him... Remy was holding him so he'd take the brunt of the freezing spray. And seemed to find it hilarious as he cursed. They playfully wrestled a bit before scrambling out of the tub and wrapping up in towels.
"You said you needed solitude," Remy finally said with a slow smile.
"I had enough."
"You 'ungry?"
Unbelievable. "You're still-"
Remy laughed. "Non, I need a little recovery time first, me. Meant it for food. We could get breakfast."
"At two o'clock."
"Still breaking our fast no matter what time it is."
"Then feel free to feed me."
"You'd tempt a saint, you know dat? Breakfast it is."
***
The place Remy drove them to felt oddly restful with its dark wood walls and antique furniture. It radiated permanence and what might have been class. Yet the clientele was such a varied mix of older people dressed up and younger people dressed funky that he and Remy, groomed, their clothes telekinetically clean, didn't look too out of place and didn't attract any unwelcome attention.
"Best place in dis city to get beignets," Remy said as they claimed a small table, "though they have more dan just dat."
Nate didn't watch Remy too closely. Couldn't, not after the motorcycle ride over had gotten him half-hard again. Damn, give him a little bit of sex, and he became an addict.
"Nate. You still in dere?"
He could control himself. He would. "I'll have a plate of beignets too."
"Your first beignet shouldn't be 'ere-"
"I'll survive. Somehow."
"Yeah, yeah. Two plates of beignets. I'll 'ave a coffee wit' chicory," Remy said to the waiter, who appeared without warning. "What do you want to drink, Nate?"
"Tea."
"What kind o' tea?"
"There's more than one?"
"Don't 'ave time to teach you de wisdom today. Just get 'im a regular tea."
Seated across from Remy, Nate kept seeing Remy's dark sunglasses as a barrier that hid his face, and a disturbing barrier at that. They made Remy resemble Scott, Nate's sort of almost father, which was *way* too wrong. "Could you take those off?"
Remy's mouth quirked, and one eyebrow rose above the concealment of the sunglasses. "I could. Just wondering why."
"Sometimes they really make you look like Scott."
Remy cough and smiled. "Dat's impossible."
"But true."
"And yet so wrong dat it might shatter time and space." He took them off, and in the dimness of the café the red of his eyes glowed a little.
Nate know other people who had their mutancy stamped on their features but few who wore it as lightly as Remy did. Yes, they were only his eyes, but the red on black looked so weirdly evil that they made an impression. In the dark, the red resembled two moving laser sight dots. But through sheer attitude he made them oddly sexy.
"Better?" Remy asked, his smile reaching his eyes.
"Much."
"'Cause nobody wants to be reminded of Scott if dey don't 'ave to be."
Nate smirked. "Don't be trash-talking about my Dad like that."
Remy shook his head violently, sending his wild auburn hair swinging. "I'm never gonna get used to the Scott-Grey cross-time family craziness, not if I lived to be one 'undred."
"Try being one."
"*Non*, dat's okay. No urge."
The waiter put their drinks down on the table, startling Nate. With his telepathy dead, he kept getting surprised by people who just seemed to pop up around him, since he couldn't Hear them anymore. From a distance, they didn't seem real anymore, just flat moving images.
He didn't want his telepathy back. He didn't.
But he still calmed himself by listening in on what he Felt from Remy, the rare person he still could Hear on some level. Just out of a lifetime's habit. Remy was peaceful but a bit tired still from a sleep deficit gotten from too long a time of nightmare-disturbed nights, too much to be fixed just by today's rest. He also felt the gnawing urge to smoke a cigarette. Anyone else would have found those black jeans to be too tight to be comfortable. But every time he looked at Nate, a certain warmth ran through him. Happy to be here, with this company.
But Remy might have struck him as real even without the psi affinity. Just by *being*, the Cajun claimed the space he was in too definitively to be denied or ignored.
Nate saw the waiter coming back with the beignets through Remy's awareness, so this time he didn't jump. Remy had an excellent awareness of the people around him at all times, which could have been his latent psi talent, some other mutant ability, or just habit. He'd chosen them a table that put his back against a wall and gave him a view of the door and the rest of the room.
The beignets turned out to be fried donuts buried under loose powdered sugar. Remy dug right in, obviously not caring about the mess, so Nate did the same. Besides, telekinesis stopped any of the sugar from falling on his clothes. Nate expected something heavy from how the things were fried, but they were light instead, crispy on the outside but soft on the inside. Very sweet, but not cloying with it. Tasty. Even tastier when he tasted them through Remy, who overlaid the taste in his mind with associated memories of golden sunlight and the scents of river water, flowers, and orange juice.
As Remy took another big bite out of one of his beignets, another light fog of sugar powder drifted off. He closed his eyes, savoring this sensually, just as he seemed to do everything. "You know, one time I killed a man wit' a beignet. *Non*, better than a beignet, jus' the powder off a beignet."
Knowing what Remy's powers were, Nate had a pretty good idea of how that had worked, but he wanted to hear Remy tell it with all embellishment in that honeyed voice. "How do you kill a man with sugar powder?"
"Don' wanna know why? Well, I'll tell you anyway. I was sitting dere enjoying my breakfast-"
"At what, noon?"
"One in de afternoon, snarky boy. So I was sitting dere at a table outside at Café du Monde - You ever been to New Orleans... Non? - minding my own business, me, when dis big lump comes galumphing up to me."
"Somebody you knew?"
"Never saw 'im before. You don' forget somebody dat big. So, says 'e, 'I'm gonna kill you dead, LeBeau!'"
"You said something sarcastic back."
Remy smirked. "'Course I did. I told 'im dat I didn't see any other way 'e could kill me. Took 'im a few minutes to figure dat out. Pissed 'im off more once 'e got it. Fortunately, the folks around me saw badness coming and 'ad already taken off, leaving me in a clear area near de edge of de patio. Guy charged at me like a running bull, but I sidestepped 'im. Just pissed 'im off more. We kept on dancing and dancing, and 'e just got angrier and angrier. Didn't wanna lead this guy out to de street, and 'e wasn't giving up, so I decided to drop 'im."
"Which is where the beignets came in."
"Dere was enough sugar on just one to take 'im down. I picked it up, charged de sugar powder to explode, and blew it at 'im. Place needed a squeegee to clean up de remains." Remy sobered, looked more thoughtful. "Still don' know why 'e wanted me dead. Could 'ave been a family or a guild or job t'ing, I dunno. Lots of people gunning for me and mine, always. Kind of t'ing went on a lot. I t'ink you know 'ow it is."
"Yeah, I do."
He looked so sad, distant, and Felt cold. "It used to be a funnier story, sorry."
It hurt Nate to feel it. Why did guilt translate to cold for Remy? Nate couldn't get in deeply enough to find out.
Nor should he. Nate said, "You changed."
"For all de good it did me."
Nate couldn't let this continue, not with Remy this uncomfortable and making him feel the same way. "I could try to cheer you up."
Remy's red on black eyes sparked. "Yeah? 'Ow?"
"I think you might like it."
"You got dis wicked look on your face. Got somet'ing naughty in mind?"
"Yeah."
***
Remy smiled back, already better than usual just from having someone with him who saw him instead of his past. This wicked something should be fun, and he needed a diversion. "I always approve of naughtiness. Lay it on me." He felt it start inside him, a small pressure. Telekinesis. Remembering that moment on the dance floor when Nate had briefly fucked him that way, Remy relaxed his body as much as he could and said, "Oh, yeah, go for it."
It was like a slowly expanding plug, growing to fill him. He smiled at the thought of all these people sitting around them with no idea of what they were doing, but then the feeling of it cut down on unnecessary thinking. Expanding and expanding... He'd never been this full, and Nate kept pressing his prostate with unerring accuracy, sending waves of pleasure crashing through him. His hips started to move on their own.
Remy licked his lips and said, "Maybe we should take this party elsewhere."
Nate smiled, looking dazed but self-satisfied. "Where?"
"Men's room downstairs."
Nate kept that tk plug in him the whole walk down, driving Remy crazy, since every movement he made seemed to lodge it deeper. When they reached the men's room, Remy threw Nate in, slammed the door behind them, and locked it.
***
Feeling Remy's pleasure as he did, Nate could barely do more than keep his telekinesis under careful control. He'd had sex as a telepath before, but he'd never felt his partner's sensations this strongly. Threnody had always held so much of herself back, kept him out. He hadn't realized what he was missing.
Remy's eyes blazed as he backed Nate against the marble counter, and he Felt like molten heat. "Fuck me, Nate." His voice sounded rough-edged, making Nate's cock go even harder.
"Uh." Yeah, that was good.
But, intent on his goal, Remy unfastened his jeans for him and pulled away his underwear, then rolled the condom onto his cock. Nate bucked into his hands. Remy went to his knees on the tile floor and licked long, hard, hot stripes along Nate's cock, taking care of everything, it seemed, while Nate drowned under their feelings and lust and just struggled to keep his power under control.
Remy stood, grabbed Nate, and set him aside to stand near the one toilet before yanking his own jeans open and down, then his briefs. He turned to the counter and bent over it, his ass perfectly displayed.
"'Ow much of an invitation do you need, Nate?" Remy gasped.
That knocked Nate out of the state of sensual shock he'd fallen into, the way he could feel cold, hard marble against Remy's stomach... With a thought, he removed the plug, which made Remy moan in disappointment, and slowly thrust in. "'M not made of porcelain," Remy said, then groaned at the harder, faster next thrust.
As Nate watched himself fuck Remy in the mirror, he also felt it from both sides, fucking and being fucked, too much to take. The skin of Remy's back and ass hot and smooth against him, the texture of Remy's buttery soft leather jacket, the feel of the cold counter rubbing against Remy's stomach and sometimes cock, friction, his own thrusts, Remy thrusting into the grip of his hand, their hearts pounding in time...
When someone knocked on the door, Remy growled, "I'm busy!" then laughed. Strangely enough, the laugh made Nate come, and Remy followed, probably from Feeling Nate let go in a blaze of release. They shivered together until Remy laughed again and said, "Gonna spoil me, Nate. Damn, I need a smoke."
Nate reluctantly stepped back, missing the sensual madness already. Mouth sweet with powdered sugar, Remy kissed him, then dressed himself in fast motions, then kissed him again before leaving. Remy muttered a "sorry" to the man who'd gotten half knocked out from the force of the door opening... before he closed the door again to let Nate get dressed.
Nate almost laughed himself. It was all crazy, but it felt incredible. It wouldn't be a good idea to get used to this, but he could sure as hell enjoy it while he had it.
When he walked back up to the dining room, he saw Madelyne sitting at their table, her red hair a blaze of color in the dim, sober dining room. Until his association with Remy, he hadn't realized that fellow psi talents still struck him as being real people, even with his own psi gone.
Seeing her reminded him of all the things he'd set aside since last night: his past, his mistakes, his guilt. The way his powers would kill him around the time he hit 21. His life. Something inside him shrank and went cold.
"He's pretty," Madelyne said, "but you're already living through his mind. It's so much easier being someone else for a while... Do you really see this ending well?"
"This is none of your business."
"Everything about you is my business. I worry." While she looked like his mother's reflection, only dressed in tight black leather.
"This won't last." It was fading already, much as he wished otherwise.
She smiled, pleased.
Remy walked in. "Gotta settle de bill." His mouth twisted. "I've been called back."
When Nate looked down, he realized that Madelyne had already disappeared. It figured.
"I wanna see you again," Remy said as he put down the money. "You got a place I could leave a message?"
That feeling of contentment rose again, then crashed and burned. "Not exactly." But... "Look, if we're both in town in the same time-"
Remy shook his head as he started toward the door. "-same reality, same planet-" When you put it like that, it did sound like they led crazy lives.
Nate followed. "I'll track you down." Wow, that sounded almost sinister.
Remy didn't seem to feel that. "Dat's cool wit' me. Wanna ride for a while?"
"I don't think we could do that without at least one of us wanting to pull over to the side for a while and take a break."
Remy's smile was pure, wicked sex. "I'm waiting to 'ear what's bad about dat."
"Okay, nothing. But-"
Remy shrugged. "But if you don' wanna meet wit' de X-crew, I get dat. A lot of times I don' want to either." Remy wrapped Nate into a tight embrace and kissed him, sucking on his tongue a bit for emphasis, leaving him breathless. On a public sidewalk in front of anyone who happened to be passing by. "See you later, den," Remy said as he pulled away.
"See me later?" Nate asked, still dazed.
"Good-byes always seem so final. I'm an optimist, me."
Nate burned the image of Remy as he looked now, slouching casually yet elegantly in all of his black clothing, the sunlight showing flaming red streaks in his hair, *warm*, into his brain. It would probably have to last him a while. "See you later. Count on it."
Remy put his helmet on, mounted the bike, and saluted Nate before driving off. With Remy's presence receding, Nate felt his usual state of affairs return, but it felt a little different this time.
Maybe this was hope. He never had much to look forward to before.
END
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