Dated: 5/13/03
 
 
 

Ororo gave him a slight squeeze on the shoulder and left the room. Remy closed the door quietly behind her and turned around slowly to gaze upon the man asleep on the bed. He’d been stripped of the remnants of his tattered uniform and wrapped in blankets to keep him warm.

Logan lay in bed beneath the sheets and cover-blanket flat on his back, eyes closed and his face turned slightly to the left. The small lamp on the bedside table cast a gentle glow no brighter than a child’s night light on the supine form. It was a deceivingly peaceful scene.

Remy blinked at his lover as he slept so peacefully. Oh if only he was just sleeping… what a magnificent scene it would be.

He took a deep breath and stepped toward the bed. As he moved closer, Remy noticed a small pile of damp towels that’d been dropped on the floor at the foot of the bed. He bent down and scooped them up. The smell of chlorinated pool water invaded his senses.

He gripped the towels tightly in his fists and looked again at the still form lying on the bed. His jaw clenched with the thought of what’d happened as anger rose inside him.

‘Dey had no right.’ Remy proclaimed silently. He couldn’t get the thought out of his head.

They’d had no right to try and take his lover away from him. They had no right to try and take away the one person in the world that he could count on. They had no right to try and take away his future with this man… to leave him alone again… to leave him stranded and hopeless and… alone again…

‘Alone again?’ He grimaced. The very thought, of his own selfishness, created a vile taste in his mouth. ‘Is dat all ya’ can t’ink of, Remy LeBeau? Ya’self? Ya’ own needs? Ya’ own fears. Connard!’ He berated himself silently.

Then he marched to the private bathroom adjacent to the bedroom, dropped the wet towels in the hamper and grabbed two folded bath towels from the warming shelf on the wall.

Logan’d had the special shelves installed to surprise Remy - who seemed to always feel even the slightest chill right to the bone. Ever since…

He returned to the bedroom clutching the warm, fluffy towels to his chest. He stood on the opposite side of the bed from where Logan lay and gazed upon the man he loved. He looked so relaxed… so peaceful… so serene.

But it was a lie. It was deceiving. They’d hurt Logan and tried to take his life. They’d taken the life of the child he’d fought to protect and, in doing so, they wounded him deeply. They hurt him so badly, emotionally, that he’d closed down - shut everything out. They wounded his mind… and shattered his soul.

‘Remy here for ya’, chere.’ He told Logan silently, then knelt gently on the edge of the bed and made his way to Logan’s side.

Remy stretched out beside him and flipped open one of the towels with one hand. He could see the moisture that was still trapped in Logan’s thick mane and draped the towel gently over his head.

The others had made an otherwise decent attempt to dry Wolverine’s body so he wouldn’t catch a chill in his shocked state. But Remy knew all too well that Logan’s thick body hair soaked up water like a sponge and it took forever for him to dry off completely.

He squeezed the towel into Logan’s hair, scrunching it with his fist and it immediately drank up the excess liquid. He scrunched it a few more times then threw the water soaked towel over his shoulder toward the bathroom.

Getting up on his knees, Remy scooped one arm gently under Logan’s head and lifted it off the pillow while slipping the other folded towel under his head. Then he lay back down and looked at him.

Logan never flinched. He didn’t even moan. Even the soft rhythm of his breathing didn’t falter as Gambit moved around him. Remy swallowed hard. What was he going to do?

How can I help ya’, chere?’ Remy asked quietly. There was no response.

He bit back his tears as he draped his arm across Wolverine’s chest. He put his head down beside Logan’s and drew in the smell of the dank pool water. It was real.

Remy couldn’t forget what he’d been told by Hank and the others even if he wanted to pretend it never happened. It did happen. And he hadn’t been here for the team. He hadn’t been there for Logan when he needed him.

Remy moved his arm up under Logan’s chin and wrapped his forearm around his head. Logan’s face rolled toward him as he drew him closer in his embrace. He placed a tender kiss to his lover’s forehead and held him tightly to his chest. His long slender fingers stroked Logan’s scalp, combing through the damp matted hair.

His thoughts drifted as he stroked Logan’s dark mane. Despite it’s usual crazy and wild appearance, it was really quite soft. It was thick and luxurious and Remy loved the feel of it.

He always loved touching Logan. All hard muscles and soft, thick hair. He couldn’t stop himself from thinking about how beautiful his lover really was. He thought about that all the time actually.

The first time he’d told Logan that his response was a burst of genuine laughter. Shaking his head with a grin, he told Remy…

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“I’ve been called a lot o’ things in my lifetime… but ‘beautiful’was never one of ‘em.”

And, he remembered his own response to that…

“Can’t help it if people are blind, homme. But Gambit a good t’ief, cause he know a real work of art when he see it.”

His words were certainly true of how he felt for the older man although he’d been nervous about saying them aloud. He’d always been worried about revealing his true feelings for Logan and feared he would be rejected.

How could Logan not reject him? He wasn’t into men. He liked the femmes. And they liked him.

Yep. The ladies loved the Wolverine - his gruff maleness and brute strength always attracted them. His underlying gentleness and passion kept them coming back for more. They wanted to be with him. And men, well… they wanted to be like him.

Except Remy.

Remy LeBeau wanted him. For a long time he wanted him. But his fear of rejection, or being beaten to a bloody pulp kept him from telling the feral how he felt. Until that fateful day four years ago.

His fears that day were reflected in his shaky voice, and in his posture, as he sat on the boat dock beside the older man. Hugging his knees to his chest he let his long auburn hair fall across his face, as if using it as a barrier to keep the other man’s rejection from hitting him too hard.

But, the moment passed in silence and Remy slowly realized that he wasn’t being berated or insulted - or called a faggot or a whore. And when he realized that he wasn’t being pummeled viciously by the powerhouse sitting beside him, he turned his head slightly to peer at the man through his long bangs.

The expression he saw on Logan’s face that day, at that moment, is forever etched on Remy’s brain. It was an expression he’d never thought to see on the Wolverine’s face. Pure, honest, unguarded emotion. The man looking back at him silently was not the one called the Wolverine, this man was Logan.

Not the Logan that brawled at Harry’s Pub on Saturday nights and not the Logan who sneered and grumbled at people in the halls of the mansion to keep everyone safely at arms’ length by being gruff and abrasive. This man was ‘true’ Logan, the man beneath the masks.

‘And dose eyes… dose big, beautiful brawn eyes. Dieu. Dey wah soulful eyes. Needy eyes.’

They were gentle eyes, devoid of any hate or anger. They overflowed with tenderness and affection and a longing that made Remy’s heart ache. They were, most definitely, lonely eyes.

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Logan’s own instincts always told him when someone was lying. He could read a person’s sincerity as easily as if he were an empath himself. Using his heightened senses to read a person’s body language or the change in their scent or the rate of their heartbeat.

And Remy wasn’t lying. Remy loved him.

Someone loved him.

It was a love that transcended gender lines. It was beautiful, it was pure and it was real. And it was right there in front of him.

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Remy’d reached out with his empathy and tapped into Logan’s emotions carefully. Just enough to make sure that what he was thinking - about the other man’s reaction, or lack thereof - wasn’t incorrect.

He was immediately rewarded with a sense of warmth and affection and desire that he didn’t think the other man was even capable of.

Remy lifted his head slightly and slowly pulled his hair back from his face. He met Logan’s gaze with a submissive air and tapped deeper into his emotions very carefully. The man was, after all, extremely skilled at hiding from other types of ‘paths’, telepaths in particular. What Remy felt with his empathic caress was not at all what he expected.

He felt fear.

A fear of reaching out, of grabbing hold of something – and wanting something – that Logan felt he was not entitled to. There was fear of rejection. But more than that, there was a fear of getting hurt... again.

‘Mon Dieu.’  Remy thought silently looking into those big brown eyes. ‘Who would’ve guessed, eh?’

He thought of a saying he’d must’ve heard a hundred times in his life. Recited over and over, time after time, to try to console him during his own times of grief. It never worked to sooth him though he remembered.  It went something like…‘Better to have loved and lost, than to never have loved at all.’

‘Yeh?’ Remy thought sarcastically. ‘Try it sometime.’
 

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The door to the bedroom opened quietly and Ororo peeked in to check on them. Remy lifted his head and tried to offer her a smile but it came across as what it was, a pathetic and sad attempt.

Ororo pursed her lips as she offered him an understandably pained expression of her own. Remy laid his head back down and closed his eyes, wanting nothing to distract him from the man he loved.

Ororo moved to the closet trying to be as quiet as possible, so as not to disturb him, and retrieved a blanket from the shelf. She unfolded it as she approached the bed and draped it over Remy.

“Logan too.” He requested in a hoarse whisper and Ororo nodded. She walked around the bed and reached over Logan to drag the blanket across him. As soon as Remy was satisfied that he and Logan were both covered beneath the blanket he settled into the bed against the feral. His forehead pressed to Logan’s temple and his fingers stroking is hair.

Ororo watched him for a moment, wishing she could alleviate some of his pain, but she knew the depth of Remy’s love for the older man. Remy loved Logan with an intensity she could only hope to experience some day in her own relationship, if and when she ever finds her own soulmate.

She looked down at Logan’s face, then stroked her fingers lightly against his furry cheek. She knew if anyone could reach him Remy could. This was going to be a test of the true power of love. She knew this. She had no doubt, but… was Remy strong enough to pass the test?

TBC