Whispers

 
 

glance

The first time Rogue met Remy LeBeau, he did not make a good impression. He arrived the month before the school year started, when many were still reeling from the events of Alcatraz.

She was storming down the hall with Jubilee as they both dissected her argument with Bobby and lambasted him into the nether regions of every inhospitable location they could think of (Hell was merely the beginning) for daring to flirt with another girl (Lorna Dane) with Rogue still in the room, though it was safe to say said lambasting would have been significantly worse if Rogue hadn't been in the room at the time.

"Ya know what his excuse was?" Rogue snipped. "'Ah was just tryin' to make her feel comfortable an' welcomed on her first day.'"

"He is so totally—Whoa!" Jubilee stopped stock still at the top of the stairs and gaped.

Rogue obligingly looked over to see what had interrupted her friend's vitriolic train of thought.

Jubilee said emphatically, "He is hot!"

"He" was leaning against the banister at the foot of the stairs, grinning cockily, shuffling cards in masterful formations without a glance, apparently saving all of his visual attention for eyeing up a flustered Kitty in the most indecent fashion imaginable. Roughly cut auburn hair fell around his face to brush his shoulders. His eyes glowed red on a black sclera in his lean, angular face and the sharp, handsome features. He was tall, clearly well-muscled beneath his black tee, broad shoulders, trim hips. A brown trench coat hung on his lean frame.

Rogue rolled her eyes. "Looks lahke another man-whore. Ah'm not interested."

"Um. Yeah. Right." Jubilee attempted a recovery and snapped her mouth shut, gaze still planted firmly on the handsome newcomer. "Definitely not interested."

At that moment, he chose to glance upward toward them. He paused, almost frozen for a second, as intense, burning red eyes met Rogue's indifferent stare. The faintest hint of surprise flickered in the scarlet irises, and for a moment, the glow dimmed into the black. But then, he was looking back at Kitty throwing her another suggestive comment and getting ready to get a mouthful back if Rogue wasn't mistaken.

"Flirt," she muttered and turned back the way she had come.

The first time Rogue met Remy LeBeau, he did not make a good impression.

She wonders when that changed.

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After that she saw him everywhere.

He was introduced as the son of an old friend of Ororo's and the new French, geography, and shop class teacher. He made fast friends with Piotr and Sam and managed to constantly hang around where Rogue could see him, meet him, and he could flirt up the female population of the mansion, much to Rogue's disgust.

He never laid on her the thick charm he lavished all the other girls with, but whenever she walked into a room he was in, he would stop whatever he was doing for just an instant and glance at her before returning to whatever he was doing before.

She couldn't ignore it. The look in his eyes in that moment was so much more potent than anything she saw when he eyed up another woman, no matter how appreciative his compliments.

She pretended not to notice.

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Rogue hated crowds. She wasn't sure how Jubilee, Kitty, and Lorna had talked her into going to the crowded little night club, packed wall to wall with a sea of dancing, drinking, cavorting strangers showing off too much skin.

She lost hold and sight of her girlfriends all too quickly and was left turning this way and that to see someone familiar. Rogue wrapped her arms around herself in a tight embrace.

A bit of auburn hair, a brown trench coat...

Was that?

She darted forward but after a few moments of searching, she gave up, realizing she didn't recognize anyone here. Where were her friends?

A tall man leaning against the bar, laughing at some ditzy blonde in a low-cut top caught her eye. He seemed vaguely familiar. She studied him for a moment, and something jolted inside her. Even at this odd glimpsing angle, he was handsome, very handsome.

Rogue felt herself blushing and turned away, then wheeled back around just as quickly.

She stared at the figure at the bar, suddenly startled when she realized why he was so familiar. He looked at her then, drew his head up from the blonde, and glanced her way. Scarlet eyes glowing with a burning, pulsating hue met hers, capturing her in his gaze. Something like defiance, resentment, and something else she didn't want to name, something that called to her, poured through the heady irises ringing the black.

The moment was brief, too brief, and Remy had dropped his attention back to the blonde at his side, his all too cocky, suggestive smile back in place. He leaned in and...

Rogue turned away. She didn't want to see. And she certainly didn't want to analyze the heated fire in her cheeks. Or the burning glow in the pit of her stomach.

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"Whah do ya ignore me?" she asked him once.

Remy looked at her with surprise. "What do y' mean, chère?" Genuine curiosity colored his tone, and his rich Cajun accent swirled around her, doing funny things in her gut.

Rogue shrugged, pretending nonchalance as she buttered her toast for an afternoon snack. "Ya don't flirt with me. Ah'm just surprised is all."

What she wasn't saying is that it hurt in a small, stinging way that he was so appreciative of every woman, mutant or human. The only one he didn't notice, didn't flatter, didn't make passes at was her. Even if every time he looked at her, something intimate and tangible flared across the distance between.

Remy's eyes darkened then, his smile faded into a serious, frighteningly intent look on his face. He leaned nearer, and she took a step back.

"Y' sure y' want t' know, chère?" A faint warning underlay his tone.

"Ah have a boyfriend, ya know," Rogue said haughtily, backing up another step and grinding her hips into the counter's edge. Why had she even brought it up? she wondered.

One side of Remy's mouth slid into a cocky smirk, and he practically purred his reply, "Dere is dat. An' Stormy did tell me t' stay away from des filles wit' boyfriends." The smirk edged into something broader.

She tossed her head, clearing away an irritating strand of white hair that liked to fall in her eyes. "And is that whah?" she demanded, voice even.

She had forgotten there was nowhere to go with the counter at her back until his head dipped down close to hers and he was breathing softly, hotly on her ear in a bare whisper, sending a tremor through her entire body with a single word.

"Non."

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Rogue slips into the kitchen for breakfast the morning after her encounter with Remy in the night club. She isn't sure how to handle it, the fact that he was there for her and Bobby wasn't, that Bobby was dancing and Remy was curled up behind her, whispering to her and rubbing her back soothingly. She shakes her head to clear it and considers breakfast. To her surprise, she isn't the only one who decided to come down early. Remy is there ahead of her, frying up some sort of spicy-smelling dish and talking to another early bird, Sam.

Three southerners.

She drops into one of the barstools at the counter with a sigh.

Remy glances up sharply, catching her gaze with his burning eyes. He drops his attention back to the stove.

"Homme, y' jus' got to work up a little spunk," he says to Sam. "Ask her out already. She likes y' as much as y' like her."

"I don't know," Sam replies moodily.

Remy shakes his head and reaches over to turn off the stove.

Rogue wonders why he always does that.

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He keeps glancing at her.

Doesn't matter who he's talking to, what he's doing, whose number he's accepting written in ink or lipstick on what body part.

Never mind that her heart stops beating for that brief instant where his attention is fixed on her. Never mind that if he gave her some of the lewd looks he reserves for the other girls, she'd probably slap him hard and storm away. Never mind that she has her own boyfriend, for crying out loud.

He keeps right on glancing.

How is she supposed to formally protest such a small, if intimate, gesture?

She can't.



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