Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

“Make me one of those, would ya?” Wolverine says as he comes into the kitchen.

Gambit’s standing at the counter, fixing himself a glass of spiked eggnog. He turns to Wolverine. “Just one, mon ami?” he jokes. Wolverine doesn’t laugh.

Gambit grabs another glass out of the cabinet and pours a finger of rum into it. He picks up the carton of eggnog, but Wolverine holds a hand up.

“More.”

So Gambit splashes another finger of rum into the glass and then pauses, bottle tilted at the ready.

“More,” comes the gruff reply.

And Gambit fills the glass until it’s half full, but then he thinks better of it and just screws the cap back onto the bottle of rum and holds it out to Wolverine. He takes it without a word and leaves the kitchen, off to drink by himself somewhere else apparently, and Gambit feels a little pity for him, a man cursed with a healing factor that’d sober him up before he ever really got drunk.

He sighs. This was going to be a long winter break.

The rest of the house was all gathered in the living room, sitting around and telling stories, celebrating. There was going to be another Summers wedding come the new year, and they had announced it that day, just after Christmas dinner. Good news, great news, really, except to a certain couple of residents in the mansion who were less than thrilled.

Now, Gambit didn’t mind a wedding one bit, with all the food and drink, people being merry and happy, music and laughter filling the air. No, weddings were just fine, ‘long as they weren’t his own.

But for Wolverine… Well. Hard to celebrate the day the woman you loved was getting married to somebody other than you.

Gambit finishes making the second drink, topping it off with eggnog, and takes a sip. He makes a face and coughs a little. Definitely stronger than he wanted, but what’s he going to do, let it go to waste? He takes another sip and manages to get it down without coughing again.

He picks up both glasses then and walks over to the sliding door that leads out to the back patio. Using his elbow so as not to spill his drinks, he pushes the door open and steps out into the chill December night air before sliding it shut again.

It’s colder outside than he’d anticipated, the wind cutting right through his knit sweater, and he wishes that he’d grabbed his coat on his way out. It’d snowed in the past week, and there was still a little left, crusty from refreezing after the sun went down, and it crunches under his feet as he approaches the lone figure standing at one corner of the patio.

Gambit sets the first glass he’d made on the railing beside her, settling it into the snow. “Brought you a little something.”

Rogue continues staring out over the lawn, the snow glittering even in the faint half-moon light. “Thanks, sugar.”

She’d been crying, might still be even, he can hear it in her voice, the way the endearment had caught in her throat. He doesn’t bother to ask her what’s wrong. Math’s never been his strong suit, but it hadn’t taken much to put two and two together when she’d disappeared after the Summers’s wedding announcement.

“We missed you in there,” he says instead. “They was telling stories.” All sorts of stories, but mostly ones from before he’d ever even known who the X-Men were, when they had just been five kids and the professor. Cyclops, Jean, and Beast all laughing about something that happened years ago, and all he could wonder was what it would be like to have lived more than half your life in the place you called home.

“I heard all the stories before,” Rogue replies, still looking out into the distance. She’s got her winter coat on, but her arms are wrapped tight around herself like she’s still cold, and Gambit curses himself again for forgetting his coat if only so he could’ve offered it to her.

“Not all the stories,” he says softly, and when Rogue turns towards him finally, he adds, “Maybe I tell you some of mine sometime, non?”

Now that she’s facing him, he can see that she had been crying, the tears making her cheeks shimmer, and he thinks for possibly the hundredth time that day that not only is she prettier than any white Christmas, she’s downright beautiful.

Rogue wipes the back of one gloved hand under her eyes and then narrows them, like she’s trying to see the trick. “You come out here just to tell me stories?” she asks, skeptical.

“Non,” he says, backtracking, suddenly afraid he’d shown his hand. What he’d do just to spend a day with her, trading tales. He’d tell her any story she wanted to hear if he thought it’d make her smile. “Only meant, we gon’ have some time to kill this coming week.”

She seems disappointed, and when she turns back to look out over the yard again, it’s with a quiet, “Oh. Right.” And Gambit knows he must’ve said the wrong thing somehow, somewhere.

In the morning, the others were all off to visit folks they had elsewhere. The professor was going to Muir Island to see his old belle, Cyclops and Jean had some catching up to do with the Greys, Beast was going home on one of the rare occasions that he’d go visit his parents, Storm was flying to Africa to be with her village and godson, and even little Jubilee had plans to go home to her foster parents’.

Everybody else except the two of them had other people out there besides the X-Men who cared about them. So the coming week, those few fleeting days between Christmas and New Year’s, they’d be spending alone together in the empty mansion. All the possibilities spread out in front of them, a whole week, just the two of them.

Rogue sighs. “Thought you and Logan’d be spending all that time working on those drills of yours in the Danger Room.”

Snapped from his reverie, Gambit remembers. It’s going to be just the two of them… and Wolverine.

“We got a week, chère. Ain’t spending all of it cooped up in there with him.” He shudders, partially at the thought but mostly from the cold that’s starting to really seep into his bones. He goes to take a drink from the glass in his hand, the spiked eggnog he’d tried to make for Wolverine earlier, but he’s forgotten that it’s all rum, and he splutters as it burns the whole way down.

Gambit catches the way Rogue’s lips twitch up with the hint of a smile, and he knows he’s cheered her up at least a little if she can manage that. He smiles back. “Come on,” he says. “It too cold to be standing out here all night. ‘Sides, think I need to fix me a better drink.” He holds his glass up and shakes his head sadly.

Rogue turns back towards him then and points at the glass on the railing. “I ain’t drinking that. Not after yours just did that to you.”

“Ain’t blame you,” he says, before coolly swiping the other glass off the railing and taking a deep swig, draining the glass halfway. And when Rogue gasps in surprise, he gives her a sly grin. “You never know what Gambit be serving.”

Rogue’s staring at his mouth, and he can feel where the eggnog left behind a milk mustache. He instinctively runs his tongue over his top lip, licking it off, and when Rogue’s eyes follow the movement, it makes him feel warm all over, like the cold can’t touch him anymore.

Gambit leads the way back to the sliding door and opens it again with his elbow before standing aside and letting Rogue step through first. He follows and then closes it behind them.

The kitchen is warm and cozy after having stood in the cold for a while, and they can hear the others still talking a few rooms over, their voices indistinct but not without that celebratory cheer yet. He sets the mostly full glass on the counter – he’ll deal with that one later – before moving to leave the kitchen.

Rogue frowns. “Thought you were making another one?”

And Gambit stops to say to her softly, “Got all I need right here.” And there may be no way that he can convey in those six little words all that he means. The half-empty glass in his hand, and yet the fullness in his heart.

They walk over to the doorway to the hall that leads back to the living room and all of their friends, every single person in the whole world who cares about them collected in that room, and he decides to try his luck, to ask one last thing of Rogue before they return to them.

He stops in the doorway, and Rogue naturally stops with him. She looks at him, a little confused but also amused, until he looks up and her eyes follow. There’s mistletoe hanging over their heads, a small bundle that he’d placed there himself that morning, hoping against hope like the stupid fool he was.

While he’d been putting the finishing touches on Christmas dinner, he’d seen Cyclops sweep Jean off her feet and dip her into a passionate kiss in this very spot, so it’d been no big surprise to him when they’d announced their second wedding shortly after. But the way Jean had looked at Cyclops after their kiss had made Gambit ache with a strange melancholy jealousy that he hadn’t been able to shake since.

Rogue’s still staring up at the mistletoe. “Remy…” she says hesitantly.

“You didn’t get me anything for Christmas, chère,” he says with a little smile. “Could still make it up to me.” He tries to sound blasé, like it don’t much matter to him which way this goes, but his heart betrays him, skipping a beat when she finally looks at him, her eyes full of that resigned sadness she so often has for him.

And when Rogue makes a sound that could be an exasperated sigh but also sounds a whole lot like a stifled sob, he thinks maybe he’s gone and said the wrong thing again.

She gives him a shaky smile. “Rather you didn’t spend the next week flat on your back in the infirmary.”

“There be worse fates that could befall un homme,” he says, digging his feet in.

Rogue shakes her head and says quietly, “Not to me.” She offers him a consolation then, smiling again, “And not when he’s promised me stories.”

And Gambit takes a deep breath, lets the want wash over him, and all the bitterness, too, and then he lets it go. He returns the smile. “If the lady be wanting stories, then stories she’ll have. ‘Long as the others finished telling theirs, that is.”

He brings his glass up to his mouth then, tilting it back and finishing it with a flourish. But before he has a chance to lick the leftover eggnog off his lip again, Rogue reaches up and wipes it off with her gloved thumb. Caught off guard, Gambit holds perfectly still, breath bated as she lingers a moment. She trails her fingers against the underside of his jaw as she pulls her hand away, curling her fingers a little against where the soft flesh meets the V of the bone, and Gambit feels like a channel catfish, dragged from the murk of some muddy riverbed, caught hook, line, and sinker.

Rogue steps away from him and out from under the mistletoe. He’s still too stunned to follow just yet, but he feels the pull of her still. Always.

“Didn’t get you nothing for Christmas ‘cause I figured you done stole whatever you wanted anyway,” she teases. “Didn’t think there was anything left I could give you.” She shrugs before turning and walking away towards the living room, towards the welcoming warmth and familiarity of their friends, the folks who were the closest thing either of them had ever come to real family, and there’s a lightness to her step that wasn’t there before.

Gambit runs a hand down his face and groans, and he thinks maybe he needed that second drink after all. And maybe, too, it’d be best if he did spend the next week with Wolverine before he had a chance to make a royal fool of himself.

He goes to join her and the others then, but not without shaking his head and chuckling a little to himself ‘cause Rogue had gotten it all wrong.

Wasn’t a thing in all the world that he could beg, borrow, or steal that would’ve sated him.

‘Cause all he’d wanted for Christmas was her.