Things Have Changed

by Jane St. Clair [ or janestclair15@hotmail.com ] and Te

 

Disclaimer: If they belonged to us, they'd eventually try to escape, and, well. Tragedy.
Fandom: X-Men (movieverse)
Spoilers: A bit of movie stuff. Takes place post-movie.
Pairing: Cyclops/Gambit, Cyclops/Jean Grey
Rating: NC-17.
Authors' notes: Suspenders. This came from suspenders. Title snitched from Bob Dylan.
Feedback is our sunshine. Our only sunshine.

 

He'd shown up on the doorstep of the school a week before. Literally.

One pitifully light duffel bag and the clothes on his back. Ragged, indeterminately teenaged and far too thin, though as it turned out the bag contained nearly eight thousand unexplained dollars. A down payment on tuition that the Professor, of course, refused to accept.

It's now stored in the vault.

Jean told me that he's been down to check on it, twice, a fact which all the security monitors have missed. It's not difficult to imagine how the boy got the money, but no one is interested in asking pointed questions, though Jean and I agreed privately that keeping a mild psi-monitor on him at times was just a good idea.

Not that different than what we do with any of the new kids, really. Mutants have troubled lives in this world, and trouble tends to follow a person, whether they deserve it or not. And even if we wanted to -- and I admit, I was tempted -- a mild psi-monitor was all that could be achieved.

The boy had a number of highly sophisticated psychic walls that suggest he was at least partially raised around telepaths.

So, he called himself Gambit and knew a startling number of ways to play the several decks of cards he kept on him at all times. An interesting choice of weapon. Sometimes I feel that we are as much a collection of beloved -- but dangerous -- oddities as anything else.

Hank suggested we invite him to the Thursday night poker game, but I wasn't sure. Even with everything that has happened, we still don't even know how old he is.

He showed something like a savant's touch with the basic algebra we started him with, reads on a tenth grade level, and his first essay for Storm showed what we hope to be a vivid imagination.

He's had no problem fitting in with the other kids thus far, and I like to think we all played a part in making them such a good group. Bobby, especially, has reached out, and Gambit has responded in kind.

A few of the girls giggle around him, and make up somewhat painful poetry about his strange red on black eyes, which Rogue laughs about in a voice that is still not entirely her own. The Professor assures me the effects will fade with time, but I understand enough about the world to know that she'll never be the same girl she was when she joined us.

I suppose we all change.

When I joined us -- and when I came, "us" was me and the Professor -- I know I was closer to being a ghost than anything like a recognizable teenager. I'd had my eyes closed for a year, and for the last three months of that year no one bothered to talk to me. From the number of people I heard screaming on a daily basis I can guess that I'd been relegated to state psychiatric care. Nothing else to do with a boy who won't open his eyes and won't explain why he's keeping them shut. I think the Professor was vaguely surprised to find I was still verbal.

He got his challenge eight months later when he brought Jean back, because she wasn't sane. I only talked to her weeks after she arrived, when the Professor had taught her to build her shields to the point that she could stand to have me in the room.

I don't know whether it's a personal bias in my observations or some deeper scientific pattern that most of the kids since fall into either the Scott-model or the Jean-model. Self-protective or self- destructive. Mostly the former, because the ones who survive long enough for us to find them are the strong ones. This one, though. He seems happy, but he's got what I still think of as the Jean-aura. Something brittle about him waiting to break loose.

I got my first sense of what might be waiting when I asked him to work with me one-on-one in the gym. No powers, just wanting to see what he knew and what he'd been doing. Maybe get some sense of how dissociated he was from his body. Most of the kids are, to some extent. Adolescents don't do well with their bodies at the best of times, and ours have essentially had their bodies turn on them. So I was expecting some awkwardness, and I'd locked the other kids out in anticipation of it.

He wasn't like anything I'd expected. I hadn't seen anyone move that fully in their body since Logan took off. Whip-fast and sloppy as any of the street-fighters we've taken up, but lacking that essential awkwardness I expect to see in teenaged boys. And I did pin him, but it took a long time, and when I did it was only for a moment. Just long enough for him to twist like his spine was liquid and kick me off. So hard that when I landed I greyed out for a few seconds, and by the time I could focus again he was standing and watching me.

He didn't offer me a hand up, but I offered him a smile and a rueful surrender. The smile I was looking for didn't come, and as soon as he was sure I was going to be able to stand up on my own, he left. Didn't ask, or look back.

I had to ask Jean to find him for me. She was angry and I couldn't tell why, and when I asked she only said that he was bleeding across her psi-monitor and hissed a little in frustration.

When I knocked on Storm's attic door, she let me in wordlessly and went back to her book without waiting for me to talk. Nodded to the open window. Gambit took to Storm, for some reason, and she's on the verge of making a pet out of him. I can understand why -- when he's friendly, he's utterly charming -- but I wish she wouldn't.

He was out on the roof, sitting with his coat pulled around his shoulders and one pale, bony knee pushing out of the ripped knee of his jeans. The cigarette in his hand was almost, but not quite, a surprise. I'd smelled something vaguely sweet on him since he'd arrived, but I hadn't put a name to it yet. And I wondered whether he'd been ducking into town to get it, or if he'd talked someone else into doing it for him, or if this was just the tail-end of whatever he'd brought with him when he decided to lay himself down at our door.

I don't like drugs, but I understand the need to escape. The latest studies show that drug use is as prevalent among mutants, if not more so, as it is in the hardest hit groups. Escape the mind, if not the body. I'd had more than one run-in with alcohol before Jean began to accept me. I'd loved her from almost the beginning, fear of her insanity easily shifting to fear for her.

Still, the rules were in place for a reason, not least of which was the fact that, with training, Gambit could become a necessary and valuable part of the team, if he decided to join us.

I crawled out on the roof and sat beside him. He didn't look at me at all, still staring out at ground and sky, and offered me the joint.

"We don't use drugs here."

Noncommittal shrug from under the battered trenchcoat and he took another hit, breathing deeply and easily. He clearly wasn't new to this. Sometimes I wish Logan were still here. At the very least, he wouldn't have mistaken the smell for some odd cologne.

I smiled ruefully to myself. "I'd appreciate if you'd put that out."

Gambit turned to me and smiled, smoke drifting across his face. "Gambit'd appreciate it if you let him keep it going."

Another thing, that disconcerting and somehow precious way of talking about himself in the third person, the look which said he knew full well he was being more than a bit ridiculous. I shook my head. "Sorry, it's against the rules here." Bit back the urge to remind him that he'd asked to enter the school, because I knew it would be precisely the wrong tack to take.

"All right." Low, slow, smiling voice and Gambit took one more hit before wetting his finger and putting it out with exaggerated compliance. Stashed it somewhere within the coat and I knew it would take federally trained dogs to find it again. "So. What you wanna talk about, homme?"

"Why you're out here, for a start."

"The night is beautiful, it is warm enough." Another shrug.

"You seemed upset earlier."

Silence, broken once by the drum of Gambit's fingers on the shingles, and then taken up again, so I started over.

"We'd all like you to be comfortable here."

He laughed. "Comfortable. Gambit don't need comfortable."

"I do."

"Ah, soft, soft. I think you'd like New Orleans, homme. Parts of it." And he smiled lazily at me, in a way I'd call flirtatious if it was a woman doing it, or if we'd been in a city somewhere, far away from the trees and quiet.

As it was, it was more than a little disconcerting. "How old are you?" I blurted, clenching my jaw at the break from formula.

A raised eyebrow to go with the smile. "Old enough."

Which made me think that the real answer was 'not very.' All the worse because the coquettish look he gave me was so effective. One little tilt to the head was enough to remind me that this was a startlingly pretty boy. The effect wasn't damaged particularly by the faint line of stubble along his jaw, but something about the eyes threw me.

The red had almost vanished into the layers of black. It left me with a strong sense of the person being not there. His focus notwithstanding, because I suddenly had him inside my personal space. Not touching, but...

"The eyes bother you?"

"No." I'd seen stranger things on the kids. I'd seen stranger on myself. And he'd already put the joint away, so I wasn't going to insist on anything further.

"Gambit could keep them closed for you..." And leaned in and kissed me.

Just his lips on mine, and it wasn't as deep or as demanding as I might have expected. Delicate little brushes of his tongue on my mouth, never quite pushing in. And strange, because if he'd been more aggressive about it, it would have been easier to push him away.

The first time I kissed Jean had that same edge of imperfection. It served as the reminder I needed that the person trying to seduce me -- and coward that I was, it was her who kissed first -- was human enough to be hurt. Enough to wake my protective instincts as well as my hormones. Enough to bring my hands up to hold those shoulders for a second, not surprised somehow that he'd crawled in to straddle my legs, and cling before easing him back.

I'd expected something flirtatious. What I got instead was a half- turn of his head while he tucked himself in against my shoulder and hung on. Both hands slid over my torso, getting under my sweater faster than he should have been able to.

"Gambit, this isn't a good idea." As softly as I could. It wasn't the first time one of the students had tried to seduce me, but it was only the second, and it was the first time that it was one of the boys. Kept my hands out in space to avoid touching him, because there wasn't anywhere to lay them where I wouldn't be either groping him or hanging on.

"Gambit old enough to know what he wants."

It was punctuated by a shimmy against my lap. I realized that I couldn't push him off without potentially knocking him off the roof, but the sheer awkwardness had me looking for another escape route. All the more prisoner a second later when his roving hands caught the suspenders I had on under my sweater and gripped them. A little tug on them, and a smile while Gambit leaned back a little to look at my face.

It gave me enough room to slide out from under him, but I was still crouched inside his personal space when a dark hand rapped at the window and Storm stuck her head out.

"Are you planning to stay out here all night? I think it's going to rain."

I wasn't sure whether Gambit knew her well enough to understand the irony of that statement, but I know I was grateful to her. I stayed on the roof until Gambit was inside. He hugged Storm before he left.

Somehow, in spite of his size, it was a very childish gesture, and I found myself cursing softly at the erection he'd gotten out of me. Utterly wrong to respond that way to a boy who laid his head on Ororo's shoulder and let her stroke his hair and was gone before I came inside.

I think I understood Storm's keeping him as a pet a little better. It was... safer that Gambit have an outlet for some of his needs. For at least one of us.

I crawled in a little sheepishly, trying to take in Storm's mocking smile as only my due, but it was hard. "So what did you do when he tried to seduce you?"

Smile gone in an instant. "I don't think that's any of your business." Haughty and cold, but there was a faint flush to her cheeks. I was thankful for her relatively pale skin.

"Took a night flight, did you?"

She snorted. "Don't think I did not consider it. Gambit is... precocious." Peace again.

I nodded, ran a hand through my hair, caught myself trying to do it again. Jean doesn't need our psychic link when I've fidgeted my hair into a hay pile. "Thanks for the save."

"You're welcome."

Comfortable silence, and I realized that I had an invitation. I could sit down, relax, figure some of this out. I compromised and consciously relaxed again, shared a smile with her. "How did you... discourage him?"

"I promised him sleet for a month. His own, personal sleet."

I laughed and saw myself out and was perhaps more passionate than usual with Jean, who had a quirked but understanding smile for me when we were done. She trusted me to handle these things, in my ability to lead. At least, she'd told me that enough times both silent and aloud that I could tell when she was just thinking it.

I thought of the way he'd smiled at me on discovering my suspenders, and the way Jean had teased me for them years ago, and slept.

After math the next day I invited Gambit for another sparring session -- after having argued myself into a headache over whether it would be considered acceptance of his pass, and if being alone with him was even appropriate right then. I couldn't decide whether or not I was surprised when he accepted.

It was for mid-afternoon, when most of the kids were either watching TV or moaning for us to move dinner up an hour. Gambit walked in wearing the sweatpants we'd given him and a t-shirt of his own, and I filed the knowledge away for later -- a sort of compromise I've made with myself in order to deal with the random details I'm always picking up -- to keep myself sane.

We stretched adequately and I had him shadow-box for a while, studying the moves he was using and trying to determine which ones he was holding back for the eventual attack. As it turned out, there were quite a few, but, thankfully for my pride, they were better designed for street-fighters than trained ones, and I didn't make the mistake of underestimating his experience.

I had him pinned within a few minutes and he took it gracefully, offering back a copy of my rueful smile before we stood up again. He picked up the blocks I showed him easily, but he was... I can't describe it as clumsy so much as body-reluctant to learn the attacks, something I'd always internalized as being more of a difficulty for women than men, though Jean had did her best to disabuse me of the notion by sharing memories of spars she'd had with Jubilee.

I've decided that the boy is more accustomed to ending fights than started them, which is a good sign. Warming, somehow.

We're almost not qualified to teach Rogue anymore, with the memories she's consciously retained from Wolverine and Magneto. The only real challenge with her was guiding her to rely less on Wolverine's memories, if only because most of his attacks called for a greater level of physical strength.

In any case, the next spar was harder. Not necessarily because Gambit learned the lessons quickly as because natural agility must be a part of his mutant powers, or at least must have been extremely thoroughly taught at some point. I pinned him again, but getting him to stay pinned was another story.

It took three drops before I had a good hold on him, thankful for the wrestling I'd learned from another boy at the orphanage, who'd never told anyone his real name. It seemed insulting to just call him 'John' as the adults did, so I'd never called him anything at all.

Sometimes I wondered if I remembered too much about my life, if there was a limit to the number of semi-random memories I could store before I wound up living in the past all the time...

I didn't realize the potential awkwardness of our position until Gambit suddenly stilled altogether, then writhed against me, both of us on our knees, my hips pressed to his buttocks.

"Gambit --"

He did it again, moaning softly, and I released him quickly, stepping back a pace.

He shuddered, then rolled onto his back, sprawled but obviously tense.

I tried to think of something to say to break it, but it took too long, Gambit cutting off whatever idiocy I was about to offer.

"Gambit wants... Gambit just need a little touch."

And then he closed his eyes and ran one hand over his body, tracing the bit of pale skin bared at his abdomen with his fingers, dipping them below the waistband of his sweats for just a second before simply letting the hand rest on his stomach.

He was hard.

I stepped back farther. This was my fault. For putting us in this position, for not keeping aware of how we were touching when it should have been the foremost thing on my mind. For missing something so completely that I still couldn't put a name to it. Something essential in that word need.

Worse because I could feel myself respond just watching him. This skinny, still-childish body offered to me, almost irrationally. So disturbingly not the body of my lover, Jean, who'd been sleeping beside me since I wasn't that much older than Gambit was now. Little scratches of wanting ran up the back of my skull in a way that felt almost, but not quite, like Jean's mental touch.

"Fine."

It was what he wanted to hear, but he looked confused by my tone, and more confused by the single hand I held out to help him up with. I stepped back when he moved to plaster himself against me and pushed him towards the locker room.

"Go shower."

The stare he gave me was bitterly angry, but he didn't argue. Except for sex, I've never seen him argue about anything. He only smoulders at you and then does what he wants to and then you have to chase him down and explain, somehow, why he's never going to do that again. He walked away from me and all but slammed the door behind him, leaving me alone and able finally to let my knees give. Knelt shaking on the gym floor a minute before I could pull myself together enough to go after him.

Gambit was in the showers when I came in, and he didn't turn to look at me, though he had to know I was there. He kept his eyes closed and his back against the wall, and stroked himself steadily with one hand.

Private, intimate, very direct for someone who flirted so gently and insistently. I left him to it, came back when I was sure I'd heard the bitten-off whimper, and washed down while he stalked away to get dressed, still not looking at me.

A couple of minutes of hot water was enough to get the sweat off and let me argue with myself again about what I was going to do with him. I had a sense this wasn't going to stop until we reached some kind of compromise, and I wished briefly for enough of Logan's animal nature to just take care of this. All teacher-student relationships aside, he was beautiful, and it would have been exactly what my body wanted to press his face against the tile of the shower wall and screw him until we both ached.

I'd trusted in Gambit's need to perfect himself before going out, and it held for me, but just barely. He was combing the last strands of his shaggy hair into alignment when I came out of the shower, and he headed for the door so fast I had to run to stop him.

"Sit."

"Why?"

"Because this conversation isn't over, but I don't intend to have it while I'm naked. And if you run off, I will track you down, but I'll be angry when I do and I don't want to be."

"Gambit thinks maybe you already are."

I sighed. "I'm not. Yet. So sit, and I'll be with you in a second."

He sat. I was vaguely surprised, but I didn't question it. There were soft card-shuffling noises behind me while I dressed. He flicked a card at me when I turned, and I reflexively caught it. The smile he gave me in return was one I didn't recognize, but it had an ugly little edge to it.

"You might not wanna do that in future, homme." Softly. An edge of lust still smouldering under the anger crawled up my nerves towards my scalp.

I sighed. "Come on."

He didn't ask where we were going, but he didn't walk behind me, either. Long enough legs on him to keep pace with me out of the school and across the grounds.

I didn't talk to him until we hit the woods and started following the lake's opposite shore. The school was far enough in the distance that I wouldn't encounter the other kids, at least. And if I needed to have an inappropriate conversation, then I also wanted it not to travel.

I sat down on a rock and watched him stand in front of me, looking down. I sighed. "Gambit, you know what they tell you when you become a teacher? They say that kids'll try to seduce you. And it's not because they love you, though they might think they do. It's because they're looking for something, and since you're the grown-up they're looking for it in you." The look he gave me was utterly impenetrable, thought it might have just been the eyes. "So give me a hand, here. What are you looking for?"

"Gambit had a long time to not be a kid."

And had I really thought we could play it calm, serene, straight out of the text book in Xavier's head? I had about as much idea how to handle this as this kid had about how to fly.

Who knew? Maybe he'd wind up doing some of that, too, before it was all said and done. I scrubbed a hand through my hair, trying to convince myself I was thinking, but I knew what I wanted to say.

Gambit lit a cigarette and waited.

"I wasn't on the street very long -- the orphanage only liked to lose muties the hard way -- but it was long enough. Get me?"

He looked surprised for about half as long as it took him to suppress it. "You think you understand me, homme?"

"Not even close. But I know you can talk to me, if you want."

"That a better way to get in your pants?"

As a matter of fact... I spread my hands and smiled. "Try me."

Gambit nodded, thoughtfully, and headed back to the house. I sat there and tried to figure out how to plan for an attack that may or may not be an attack, that may or may not ever come. I think I was missing Magneto.

The next day he skipped most of class, but came in looking so bruised that I decided not to say anything, since he made it to the rest. By the time the danger room was free for our usual spar, he'd come out of whatever it was, and showed me he'd been practicing. A good spar, but he was also trying too hard -- a difficult fault to lecture on. He left too many weak spots open, going for speed and a controlled sort of savagery instead of finesse.

I commended him for the spirit he put into it, and talked around and through the idea that someday he might be fighting for his life on a semi-regular basis. Much too soon for hints that broad, but there was pride in his eyes. I was learning to read them, despite the intensity of the red through the ruby quartz.

The next time he used more of his blocks, but it slowed him down. I told him to practice those more intensely than the attacks that night, and considered the possibility of including him in Storm's kata practices, though it would make a big cut in his study time. I could feel Jean's disapproval.

Perhaps we'd talk to him, all of us teachers, and work out a longer term education plan. I wanted him on the team, all of a sudden and much too soon... but undeniable.

"Penny."

"Hmm?"

"For your thoughts, Scott."

"Weapons," I said, mostly truthfully.

"I have my cards, and maybe eventually my own body, yeah?"

I couldn't tell if there was a double entendre there or not, so I just let it pass. Grinned. "Never hurts to have too many weapons."

"Y'all don't use guns..."

"Never would've picked you for the kind to like things too permanent." I was flushing even as I said it, and Gambit smirked.

"Ahhh, Gambit try and try to get to know you better, but..."

"Yeah, yeah. Let's spar again. I wanna get a feel for your strengths." If nothing else, I was going to have a damned good poker face by the time this all came to an end.

To my surprise, he took me at my word, consciously or unconsciously fighting less with an eye toward power than speed and agility. I found myself relying on my instincts more than cataloguing his motions, but there was no good-teacher reason to stop the spar. I'd see if we had time and energy for a fourth.

In any case, he was everywhere, and it didn't take me long to figure out that he was going to try to wear me out before attacking seriously. A dangerous ploy, but he was almost -- almost -- good enough to make it work. I slowed the pace to a crawl and made him work harder to draw me out. As I expected, frustration eventually made him incautious, and I was able to take his legs out from under him, punching just hard enough at his bicep to still him while I pinned him for a count of three.

Apparently, he'd tired himself out.

Getting up, I said, "you, my friend, need to eat more."

"Maybe you should do more of the cooking, Scott."

I was getting used to this, closer to some kind of revelation. I knew enough about fighting to know that he hadn't faked his loss, but he liked me to be in a position of power before turning on the seduction. He would've had them all eating out of his hands. He nearly does have all of us doing it. I sighed and shook my head ruefully. "I want to feed you, not poison you."

He opened his mouth, than shut it again, shaking his own head. There'd been real feeling in his eyes for a moment, but when he looked up it was gone.

"Wanna talk?"

"No."

And he was up and walking toward the door before I could think of anything else to say beyond his name... but it was enough to pause him.

"Not... not yet."

And he was gone.

And damn me, but I let it be. I didn't go after him that night, went back to my room and made love to Jean and threw every detail I could think of out in front of her. Laid wrapped half-around her with her breast in my hand and my mouth open against her shoulder, sucking softly and listening to the psychic white-noise that was Jean thinking.

I was most of the way to asleep when she asked me, "Scott, if we weren't lovers, would you have slept with him by now?"

"Hypothetically?"

"Yes."

"Shall I take into account exactly how unethical sleeping with one of the students would be?"

"Do you want to?"

"I don't know."

I thought that it wasn't even the immorality, so much as the fact that I couldn't tell what he wanted, or why he kept asking. If he'd just wanted sex, he could have approached any of half a dozen of the male students. If he wanted a protector, he'd have been better served to go to Xavier than to me. And he had Storm to baby him.

I went to sleep without doing bed checks, and the next day he wasn't in class. His homework was waiting on my desk when I came into my office in the morning, along with completed assignments for the next two days. Xavier found logic and physics waiting on his. And I was happy to go with it. I supposed he was going over what I'd taught him yesterday, and he'd proved, at least, that the time he spent learning to fight wasn't interfering with his academic studies. I left a note on Storm's desk about the kata class and snarked back at Jean when she sent disapproval down the link.

Which meant that it was after suppertime when I realized he was gone. I'd knocked on his bedroom door, actually, wanting to talk to him about joining Storm's class, and only found his roommate. Who blinked at me when I asked where he was and then shrugged. I asked Jean and got the instant of blankness that meant she was checking on him telepathically. She answered with a hiss and pushed past me, ran to the Professor's office and told him without telling me first that one of our students was missing.

The Professor found him with Cerebro. In New Jersey.

I drove down. I didn't take the Blackbird out of sheer impracticality. It didn't commute well. So instead I drove for four hours and ended up standing on some godforsaken coastal boardwalk at dawn. Watching Gambit sit on the pier with his knees pulled up to his chin and an almost gothic array of crumbling sideshows silhouetted behind him.

"Hey."

"Allo."

"This seems a bit Yankee for your tastes."

"Gambit don' bother with that unreconstructed shit. S'just an amusement park."

He didn't flinch when I sat down beside him, and I was almost surprised. I'd expected him to be angry, though not terminally. We'd presumed he was coming back. He'd left the money in the vault and most of his clothes in the closet. Taken his old duster coat and his cards and sunglasses and anything that could have landed him up on narcotics charges. If we'd thought he was in danger, I wouldn't have been the only one after him.

He leaned into my arm a bit. I wondered how long he'd been awake. His eyes didn't give anything away, and the red-tones I see in didn't give me a real idea of how pale he might be. A bit tired, a bit stoned. He wasn't smoking, but the smell was in his hair and all over his clothes.

I wrapped the arm around him eventually. Didn't comment when one of his hands came to rest on my thigh.

He did flinch from the light when the sun came up. I thought he was just burrowing at first, and I was trying to decide whether or not to move away. Caught the screwed-shut eyes out of the corners of my vision. Stupid of me to forget how well he hunts in the dark.

I put my arm out to shield his face from the light and helped him up. Stood for a second while he pulled himself together, shielding him from the sun. And then kissed him.

Slow, and not as gentle as I'd meant, just a sudden inevitability to have the boy's mouth, and all the tastes within. Marijuana and something sugary enough to be cloying, under the acid taste of my own need.

Gambit's hands fisted in the material of what Jean calls my 'Security Sweater,' stretching the fabric and kissing me back with a sleepy distillation of all the same desperation.

I told myself that it was good, give the boy something, bind him to me with trust and the promise that I could give him what he needed, given time. But that was all bullshit, and didn't occur to me until much later anyway.

We drove to a bed and breakfast willing to serve us food for an exorbitant price. I chose to believe it had more to do with the fact that we wouldn't be renting a room than our quasi-obvious mutations.

Or the fact that it probably looked as though I wasn't renting anything more than the underfed boy beside me.

Midway through my somehow comfortingly rubbery scrambled eggs, a young family walked in, blond and fresh out of the myth of America. It was late, it was early, and my mind was moving in ways I couldn't control. I remember it took me a long time to stop staring, and by that point their little girl was staring back. A sort of innocent apprehension.

She didn't seem old enough to understand what hate and fear really meant, and I didn't want her to have to see her parents' faces go ugly when they noticed my attention. Turned back to Gambit to find him watching me, eyes narrowed slightly in thought.

I knew I couldn't control my voice if I spoke, so I simply gave him what I thought of as my "ask me now" face and waited. For nothing, it turned out, more than just a tiny smile and a head shake.

We took the Turnpike back up for most of the trip, until I finally gave up on coping with the smell and moved to the Parkway, a toll road, true, but it was relatively free of environmental abominations. There was something distinctly frightening about New Jersey, about being to drive mile after mile and see nothing but endless houses, people, sprawl.

It could have been just the fact that we were on the highway, but some random slice of memory pointed out that New Jersey was the nation's most populated state. People everywhere, from Newark to Atlantic City. A giant, fragmented city in its own right... I was feeling claustrophobic.

It was one thing to live at the school with the endless sound of teenagers, adults, and accidentally misdirected mutant powers, but this was... a tiny voice told me this was the real real world, endlessly normal and hopelessly full. I found myself reaching toward Jean before I knew what I was doing. It was too soon, I was unready, and there was so much and so little to say...

But she was there before I could pull back, somewhat irritated with a warming glow of glad-to-feel-you-Scott underlying everything else. I updated her on Gambit, and I shared the kiss. My own confusion. In return I received wordless hurt and the cold bite of scientific curiosity. Jean, my Jean, wants to know everything, every last bit of knowledge, sometimes differing from Hank only in focus.

And I could feel it, part of her wanting to use this as a way to understand both Gambit and me, and I loved her and desperately wanted to protect him and wanted Jean with all of me. Nothing so simple as love or lust so much as security, and normality, and those terrifying embers of hope that I could be smart enough for her -- no -- wise enough.

Brave enough.

Good enough.

We shared an uneasy silence across our link, but neither of us could seem to get it together enough to say even "we need to talk."

Finally, when Jean was interrupted by a student, we broke off contact. And there was the road, spooling out endlessly before me, reddish stone sound-baffling walls to the side, shiny cars in early morning sunlight like something out of a road movie.

Gambit, right beside me, his hand on my thigh.

I didn't push him off. He got something so obvious out of the contact that I couldn't. He didn't push, just held on and every so often ran his fingers over the cloth as if he could read something in it with his fingertips. And eventually he dozed off and I could drive in peace.

He slept quietly enough. A few whimpers that stilled before I could decide whether to comfort him or wake him. And he drew in on himself. Half-roused at one point to lay his seat back, then kicked off his shoes, pulled his coat over himself like a blanket, and curled up tightly.

I got back to the school in the afternoon, long before I was ready to be there. I didn't have anything clear that I could say to Jean, and no words for Gambit, and I couldn't turn him loose yet. So I didn't stop at the house. Drove down to the boathouse instead, at the edge of the lake. We haven't used it for much other than storage for the last few years, but the upper part's furnished. Jean used to sleep there whenever the collective thoughts of the mansion got to be too much. In the days when she couldn't even touch another person without screaming.

I woke him with a hand on his arm and nodded to the boathouse, then went in and trusted him to follow me. Less because I did than because I needed him to see I did.

Grey-dark inside. I pulled most of the curtains back and sat on the table because the chairs had plastic over them to protect the upholstery. I thought for a while about how we could turn the building into something useful to the school. More classrooms or some kind of training facility or a study space for the older kids. Turned at the rustle at the door and watched Gambit walk towards me.

I'd never been stalked like that. He was rumpled and sleepy and his shoes weren't tied, but he padded over as though he knew I wouldn't move, rolled himself into my arms and between my knees where they hung over the table's edge, and locked his mouth on mine.

I made him stay gentle this time. Took the kiss and worked very hard not to give it back, brought my fingers up to span the base of his neck and held him when he pulled back.

I said, "What's this about?"

He shook loose but I grabbed the shoulders of his coat and hung on, let myself be pulled to my feet as he backed off. "Nope. Come on, tell me."

"You best let Gambit go, homme." Icy hiss, no me anywhere in it, making me wonder again about dissociation, though Xavier still hadn't mentioned any problem with it to any of us.

"Not a chance."

Flash of big, scared eyes, and he twisted, and I followed him, dragging us both to the floor. Held on until I landed on top with my chest holding his down and my hips far enough to the side that he couldn't mistake this for any kind of an assault.

Gambit stilled and I brushed a steadying palm across his stomach. Felt him move a little under the touch, following it. A little tug at the edges of my brain, some kind of feeling of wanting, followed it. Enough to make me slide my hand under his shirt on the next pass and stroke him skin on skin. Itching and tugging and subconsciously begging for touch until I realized what I was feeling.

"Gambit, are you telepathic?"

It wasn't beyond the realm of possibility. The Professor had learned to use his telepathy without a teacher, and Gambit's shields suggested a fair bit of experience around people with a psychic edge.

"Nothin' like that. Just kind of... feel you. Tiens?"

I nodded. And then simply laid with my head on his chest and stroked him for a while. Remembered what it was like when I was learning to touch Jean. Her awareness of every touch was so acute that I could bring her to orgasm by massaging the palms of her hands.

I remember the vague sense that it could be like this here, that Gambit's body was the only thing he allowed to have all of him, public persona and private personality, warm and sleek.

I could hear his heartbeat, steady and pleased, feel his skin jump with the mixture of satisfaction and anxiety, anxiety slowly winning out even as he arched and moved against the palm of my hand until finally he growled and made another nearly successful attempt to throw me off.

"What you want Gambit to say? That he was neglected and abused and raped and never hugged? Damaged little boy? That make you safe, Scott? That make it all right not to touch him?

"But you want it both ways, homme. Gambit only gon' give you one."

"What if it had been Xavier pushing to get closer, Gambit? Or Storm?"

Wicked smile. "Stormy not as pretty as you, homme."

And with that, realization and its own attendant wall of shame and self-disgust. That that was what I needed to hear most of all. That it was me he wanted, not just some accessible parent figure. And it did make it safer to believe that, made it easier to rush him along until he was a part of us.

Until I could have him, however I wanted.

I was so hard, and every wall I knew how to make was slammed up between my love, my Jean, and my thoughts, even though I knew she had to know I was there, and where I was.

The other thoughts of what this boathouse could have been for Jean and I. The other dreams, stained now with the sweat between our bodies, and the raw simplicity of my erection.

Gambit's knowing smile, and the anger and sadness beneath just far enough away for me not to be able to touch.

I remember how easy it was to blank it all away except for the desire, to look at him selfishly, covetously. To strip him bare and touch him everywhere, to drag him up to my body -- still half-dressed -- and hold him still as I probed the cleft of his ass, explored and pressed, and pressed inside, while he panted against my throat and begged.

Gambit, sweet and ripe. Unshowered musk and sex against my tongue as I laid him down again and took him in my mouth. Made love to him despite every reservation, reveling in the shocked silence of my mind as Gambit buried his fingers in my hair and moaned.

I remember it being too much to take, how I wanted to devour him right there, the way I knew it wasn't enough to simply take him with my mouth -- finally pressing him down with one hand while I jacked him fast and rough, his legs trying to curl around my body.

All that bare skin denied the touch I'd promised myself to give. I used Gambit's semen and my own spit to slick my way in. Spreading him open and spitting at his hole to make him jump, maybe make him remember that I was just a man.

Maybe just to make myself remember, to allow myself the luxury of taking for taking's sake, even as I pushed myself inside and fucked him hard. Gambit laid out before me, holding his thighs apart for me, tears streaming from the corners of his eyes even as his cock grew hard again.

Even as I growled and took him harder and harder until everything grew white and silent. Until I spilled inside him with an unlovely grunt.

Stayed inside him as I softened and held his eyes, hoping he could read more in them than I could understand from behind them. I'm not the one, I wanted to say.

This is enough, said his first open smile.

Then and only then could I hold him close, not letting myself understand his endearments, and his promises.

So simple now, to see. Gambit only wanted someone to whom he could promise things, and perhaps so much the better that the person was an oathbreaker himself.

Myself.

The next week was a blur of silent recrimination and training. Jean left me to my own devices, moving into another room. Storm stayed in the attic. The professor made it clear that he wanted to talk to me, but I kept my walls up high.

And turned Gambit into a warrior with a staff in his hand, and bright colour in his eyes.

Tried very hard not to make him my whore, and only succeeding in crying my own tears into the pillow as he took me for the first time, gentle and reverent and all-encompassing.

I missed Jean. I missed my self-respect. I was so very hungry, and it bonded me closer to the boy than anything else possibly could.

I made him sleep on his own. My rule, and not one he was happy with. Partly for the very public reason that I didn't want the other kids noticing more than they already had. Partly because it was far too easy to imagine having him in my bed, and holding him there, entirely mine and fucked through the mattress every time I wanted him. His room was at the opposite end of the house, with the other kids and a desk to study at and some semblance of normalcy.

I think I was afraid.

Warren had been able to leave the school, but Warren lived outside anyway. His family fortune and his social position in the aristocracy of the east coast were armour for him. He met the Professor at a party, of all things. There with his father, with whom he'd apparently had a fight, and the houseful of children the Professor had acquired was attracting just enough notice that Warren found him. And at some point, when we were finished secondary school and deciding what we were going to do with ourselves, Warren found it in himself to walk away.

Gambit had been able to walk away. Somehow, in spite of his semi- obvious mutation, he could survive in the real, real world, the one that crawled in towards me and sent me constantly running back to Westchester.

It was something I wanted to be able to do. I might never have kissed him if he'd stayed at the school and played the child seducer. Looking in him for the independence I'd never quite reached.

Something in that train of thought took me outside. The silence around me had developed into raging claustrophobia, to the extent that I didn't stop shaking until I was off the grounds and three quarters of a mile down the road. And then kept walking. Desperate to get away, even with just my jacket and the loose change in my pockets.

Looking for breathable air and whatever I'd been looking for when I was fourteen and running towards New York, blind and desperate and somehow surviving in a way I'd since forgotten how to manage.

I was four or five miles away, and freezing cold, when I caught the growl of my own motorcycle's engine coming up behind me. Only half-restored, but I'd only had a few months to work on it. I didn't expect that I was ever going to see the one that Logan took again. Scream of the engine that I deliberately ignored until I realized that it was going to clip me. And then jumped sideways, fell, and rolled, pulled my feet under me and was up on my knees in time to see the bike skid out.

Gambit was off it before it hit the ground. He landed with the grace I hadn't taught him and stalked towards me. Rage crackled at the base of my skull, and some part of me knew it wasn't mine. The same part that was prepared for it when he kicked me in the shoulder and knocked me back.

He dropped and crouched over me, knees on either side of my hips and both hands on my shoulders, holding me down. Probably the first time he'd been in that position and not trying to seduce me.

"Gambit saw you leave from Stormy's roof. Where you goin', Scott?"

Oddly reasonable tone, just the edge of contained anger at the back of my mind pushing me towards an understanding of how upset he was.

I said, "I can't do this. I'm sorry."

Probably they were the most pathetic words of my life, but they were all I had. And perhaps cruelly, I dropped the shields that Jean had helped me build and let the bleeding frustration and terror rush towards him. Not a telepath, but still very sensitive, and if he could broadcast, I didn't doubt he'd be able to feel me.

He rocked for a second. I ended up holding him, my hands on his hips to keep him from falling until he pulled himself together. I wondered if I should have done that, given him the raw, stupid boy inside his teacher a week ago, and saved us this.

And then he pulled himself together and smiled crookedly down at me. Tears against the black of his sclera that he ignored. "S'okay, cher."

"It's not."

"No, really. S'okay." He rolled up to his feet and offered me a hand.

Which I took. Stood and was struck by vertigo and deja vu. More so when he leaned in and kissed me.

Gently. When I was his age, I hadn't known how to kiss like that. Apologetic and affectionate and warm and still insanely welcoming. Sticky-warm at the edges of his mouth but trying desperately hard not to acknowledge that he was crying. And I could give him that, at least.

He'd taken the new chrome completely off my bike, and for a moment I wondered what it would look like if I cried over it instead of him. Then pulled it upright and mounted and let Gambit press up behind me, arms around my waist and face in the crook of my neck. I would have bet my eyeteeth that he wasn't licensed to drive even a car, and he hadn't taken the helmet, but I only added those to the list of insanely dangerous things he was entirely too willing to do.

No boathouse. The room he insisted on was mine. I protested on the back stairs, but he kissed me again and whispered, "You don' ever walk away mad, cher," against my lips.

He kissed me with my back against my bedroom door and pushed us inside. Dropped his coat into a pool on the floor and crossed the room, sat on the edge of my bed, unlacing his boots and watching me.

There seemed to be a need for symbolism, a ceremony of some kind. A celebration of being wide awake, sober, and knowing. Even doing this. I took off my sweater, but waited for the most part. I wanted him to notice my suspenders.

I wanted him to give me that gentle, pleased smile again. That one, from the roof, that made me want my own parents, my own semblance of a family. Something that had nothing to do with the Professor's blank disapproval and Jean's cool silence.

I owed her. Blood. And she wasn't afraid to let me feel it, even if technically, officially, our link remained closed. God, Jean. The only person who could take me from the sight of Gambit stripping down, all that pale skin, rosy here and there with a flush that had nothing to do with embarrassment. Every rib present when he stretched, eyes on me, and Jean...

I couldn't even comprehend what I'd done, it was too much, it was everything. I've lived these past few years defining myself as Cyclops, as Xavier's team leader and teacher. Jean's lover and stop- gap, a good, sensible man who would never, could never batter at her shields. I thought it a man, solid and whole, but it was nothing.

Less than dust, and yet I still stood there. Wanting this boy. Wanting him to speak of himself as I -- but only when he was telling me he wanted me. Needed me. Oh, needed me... another lie. Right there, right then, I wasn't the one being comforted, and when he told me to take off my clothes, I did.

Suspenders first -- and yes, something very close to that smile as they swung by my thighs. Undershirt and naked beneath. I touched myself as I studied him. Touched myself where my mouth and hands had left marks on the boy, and his look was heated. Hot.

Toed my shoes off, bent to push down pants and gather the socks, too. My boxer briefs were snug, good against my erection and not yet wet. What was left for us to do? He'd already taken me... my mind was blank on the surface, roiling beneath with things that made me swallow dryly. Made me hesitate, still at the door, while Gambit sat nude and motionless.

"Come here." Not a drawl, not a whisper. Command in low, rough, liquid tones and I knew what I needed.

I walked to him until I stood between his legs. Hands loose at my sides only until he placed his palms to the bones of my pelvis. Shaped them and caressed. Hands nowhere not covered by cotton. Held my buttocks and smoothed over them, slipped between my thighs to touch me there, shaping my balls through the fabric. I was holding his shoulders by then, trembling.

I remember arguing with myself to be still, be strong, but I lost. I lost. I showed him everything, broadcast everything much too loud. I needed Gambit to hear it. Maybe I needed Jean and the Professor to feel it, too. What I had left. What was left of me, as Gambit stroked my cock and looked up into my eyes.

"Cher," he said, and I gasped. He touched me so softly, gently and so. So controlled.

I'm sorry I'm so so sorry, I thought. Said only "please."

Gambit nodded and cupped my ass again. "Gambit... I. I'm gonna hurt you the first time, tiens?"

"How much?"

"Enough." And he cupped my cock through the shorts and squeezed hard enough to make me cry out. Hard enough to make me give in. I like to think I needed that. A reason. An excuse.

He pushed me back and stood, shorter than me but not by all that much. Leaned in to kiss my shoulder once, lingering there. Tasting my skin before he bit down, and drew blood. It hurt, missing pleasure altogether but I didn't soften when he sucked at it. Not when he bit the other shoulder. Not when he worked and worried at my nipples until they were spikes of pain.

I stood as still as I could, shaking and moaning as he raked short nails down my back. When he pushed me back another pace and punched my biceps, one, then the other. Moved around me to bite and tear at my back, my neck. Yanked my hair and squeezed my cock again. Ripped my shorts down and bit at the root of my cock.

Over and over, all over me, fast then slow until I just left my mouth open, only moving to bite my lip or arch into it.

Balanced while he lifted one foot to sink his teeth into the hollow of my ankle.

I couldn't catalog after that. I just remember my sweat and blood running down my skin. His teeth in my lip for a heart-stopping moment. White noise and the haze of it, Gambit's hands always there to steady me when I faltered.

And then it stopped, and he took the belt from its loops while I watched. I didn't have to be told. I arranged myself on the bed, too worn to brace myself on my hands, so I rested my head on my forearms.

He didn't make me wait.

Hot, and red, the feeling more like being cut than whipped. Gambit's steady silence, ready for me to pour out every sound, and I did. I did. Crying into the pillow, my pillow. Still smelling faintly of Jean as he beat me, as my cock bobbed and swung uselessly with every move.

I was harder than I'd ever been in my life by the time he stopped and spread me.

Spit again and again on my hole. Slicking my cock just once, practical, gathering the pre-come and shoving in two fingers without warning, hands so cool against my ass. He stretched me fast and rough and then just plunged in. And it hurt, it hurt badly and I knew I'd need time to recover from this. Knew I was marked inside and out now.

Fucked mercilessly, my own pleasure obviously incidental, and I moaned and cried. Gambit's silence broken with a rhythmic series of impersonal grunts, fingertips leaving bruises at my hip while he held me right where he wanted me. And I thought of his eyes, thought of the black and moaned and let myself fall and fall until I had to scream, spraying the coverlet with my semen as he pounded into me, harder and harder.

Fell into the black until I woke up with him curled around me, holding me close and kissing my neck.

He stayed holding me for the rest of the night. Steady and half- protective with an arm holding me while I held myself together. Dozing on my side because it was the only part of my that didn't hurt like fire, turned towards the window. Clinging to the few words he offered me, nothing like promises or even comfort but solid and necessary and and undemandingly given.

And woke hours later with my face salt-tracked and my knees pulled up nearly to my chest. Light through the window, but not much. We were west-facing; there wouldn't be real light in my room for hours.

Gambit still held me, his body contoured to mine. Knees behind my knees, hips curled around my ass, one arm around my chest and one raised so that the palm cradled my skull. Contained. Beard-stubble on my back that I needed as much as I'd needed to take what he gave me.

Just still against him until he woke and rubbed his cheek gently against my shoulder blade. I hissed at the sensation, startled him, and I felt him pull back for a moment. I know he looked, but the touch he gave wasn't sympathetic. Proprietary. His wounds that he'd inflicted. My blood on the coverlet and in his mouth. And even the kiss he gave me reflected that.

Then pulled back and I rolled to face him. Thought a little about how my face must have looked that first time, when I was willing him to leave me. Hard like his now, but lacking the compassion he offered. That I didn't have in myself, yet. Not for years, maybe.

Entirely too willing when he bent in and kissed me. Careful of the ache of my face and rousing my body through the raw nerves detailing my mouth. Final in some way that didn't keep me from moaning and pushing towards him. While he pulled me in to him and then upright and into his lap without breaking our mouths' seal, passionate and pushing down. Stroking down the salt-raw flesh of my back towards my ass.

I hissed the first time he touched me intimately, but he didn't pull back, and after a moment I could breath through it. Just accept the grazing of swollen flesh and even moan when he traced up to rub at the base of my scrotum. My breath into his mouth or across his skin. He wouldn't let me pull back, drew me after him even when he reached for the hand lotion on the nightstand, silver-white aloe that Jean used on her hands before she slept. The smell disturbing and out of place but he wouldn't let me protest, only clamped down harder and then gentled when I relaxed.

Stayed kissing me while he fingered me open. One so-slick touch that pressed in and stayed, waiting me for to warm to it. Long, slow process during which the pain of last night's taking eased, and he rubbed my prostate as soon as he was deep enough. Delicate, focused massage that woke my cock and brought it up to rest against my belly. Against his. And he smiled on my mouth, tickled my ribs with his free hand until I laughed and squirmed against him and half-wrestled the touch away.

Touch that came up to brush my face and my mouth and my eyes and I would have sworn he was older than I.

His palm laid on my chest while he pushed into me. Slow and careful, and he listened to me breathe and paused when I needed him to. Burn and cool slickness and pressure. His affection radiated out from his palm's touch, creepers of longing that pulled me closer in against him and bound me to him. All over wanting while the hand dropped down to cup my ass and brace me for the first real thrust.

Careful of each other while this built. The lovemaking I'd wanted to tell the kids to enter into, the few times I'd taught sex ed: aware first of your partner and only second of yourself, cautious of the physical injury you could inflict and rolling towards something intimate and loving that didn't have to have love behind it to be good. While I pushed down onto him and gasped with the deep, sweet ache of it and he drove up in every instant I paused.

His touch was protective and just a little sorry, and I was grateful to be tall enough that he couldn't see my face. Vaguely ridiculous for someone of my height to straddle my partner during sex. My legs too long and too easily tangled, held in place by one of his hands and my own will. But I could brush his forehead and his body-warm hair with my cheek, and curl his face against my throat. And whenever I bent to him, he kissed with his eyes closed, and I was grateful for that too.

I was aching and moving carefully, and it was good, but he came first. Moaned and mauled the little undamaged skin of my throat, held me down against him. Drove as deep as he'd been at his most brutal the night before and spurted, then lifted me gently off him. One shaking arm around my shoulders while he laid me back on the bed, too aware of my openness and the wet semen sliding out and onto the in-curve of hip and thigh.

Gambit bent and kissed me. Laid a hand on my chest to keep me where I was and twisted, rolled onto his belly and down close to my hip, took me in his mouth and sucked me. Something he'd never offered to do before and for which I couldn't have asked. Warm, sliding tongue and careful throat, his teeth nowhere in evidence. Tears sliding from his nose into the tangle of my public hair, but it could have been just from the effort of breathing while he pressed his face down.

Licked and worked me, and there was a hand rolling my balls gently when I came. I didn't buck. Careful of him because I'd never quite told him that I remembered how hard it was to do that.

He swallowed, careful to make sure I saw him do it. Then bent and kissed me, so shallowly that I couldn't get a sense of my taste in his mouth. Curled in beside me and laid his head on my shoulder and stared away towards the door while I rubbed his back awkwardly across the width of my own body.

When he got up, he held onto my hand for a long minute without meeting my eyes, then dressed and walked out.

I went back to work. Not forgiven but teaching better than I had been. I ran on my own for a few days and showered in private instead of in the locker rooms, rode out the pain like I needed to.

Crouched at the edge of the grounds and watched Jean getting out of the car when she came back from an overnight in New York and quietly loved her. In the absence of the link, I tilted my head toward the sound of her voice in the house.

I turned towards her in the kitchen in the morning and she put sliced apple into my mouth and went back to cutting things up and I felt her brush the outer surface of my thoughts. Chewed on the fruit and stayed quiet beside her until she went to meet with her first class of the day.

And stepped that afternoon from the school's dark wood to the underground's shadowless chrome and saw Gambit at the end of the hall, stretching out his shoulders and waist in black leather that had to have been tailored to his too-thin body. Nothing of mine would have fit him that well.

He turned towards me. Twisted the staff back under his arm so that it half-vanished against the line of his body. And grinned so vividly...

Actually happy, which I didn't think I'd ever seen before. And so completely one of ours. I hadn't ordered him the uniform, but I was going to need to commission a locker for him. Glass case marking his ownership.

Quiet and kinetic, brave in a way he hadn't been before.

The End