tampered | if you love something set it free [complete]

if you love something set it free [complete]

When; some ungoldly morning hour of the 18th
Rating; PG-13 for angst and swearing? probably technically R at least by MPAA standards (DID YOU KNOW: two uses of the word 'fuck' is an automatic R rating regardless of context or other content? ~now you know~)
Characters; Gambit (

bangyoudead) & Rictor (

alittlecredit)
Summary; Genetic identity angst redux.
Log;

He tried to sleep. He really put an effort into it. He was exhausted enough and wanted to and knew he needed it, but sleep wouldn't come, so he drank more and sat on the roof and dozed off for a second and immediately saw Apocalypse's face and felt the cold horrifying seclusion of being powerless.

So fuck that.

Now Remy is sitting in the living room and going through a box of shit he dragged up from the Underground, testing for loose wiring and what's workable and what's not. He's no technological genius, but part of being the best thief on the planet is being able to get through any security system out there - so he can hack and build and program with the best of them. One more of those 'pay no attention to that man behind the curtain' aspects of the lurid patchwork of his life.

Something snaps in his hand because he's not paying attention to it, and slices the underside of his left thumb. He takes a slow, controlled breath in, and lets it out, suppressing the immediate urge to hurl the fucking thing at the television and explode it.

Instead he just stares at his hand and the blood on it, blank-eyed.

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There were a lot of things Rictor had to try to do lately, but sleep wasn't one of them. He'd been forcibly deprived of anything but peace and quiet ever since Wanda Maximoff's incovenient reality paradigm shift. It was actually only chance that he was awake at all, or maybe habit to get up once in the middle of the night and go to the bathroom, checking on Rahne's room and Layla's room and making sure nobody's gone and got kidnapped or something along that vein.

Either way, he's not very happy at night these days, when he is awake. His mind may be faded and clogged without his mutation, but it roams even more than it ever had before, especially to places it shouldn't.

His eyes shoot out the window for a moment as he walks into the living room and notices Gambit (he is living with Gambit, what the hell) sitting almost rigidly and staring at his bleeding hand with those black eyes of his. It makes the hair on the back of Julio's neck stand on end for a second before he speaks.

"What happened? I'm gonna go get a band-aid before I have to be embarrassed and tell everyone you never came back home with me 'cause you died of a lethal papercut."

Remy turns his head just slightly, quiet. Part of him knew when Julio was even breathing in the apartment, the trained part of him he can't turn off. But he's still a bit zoned out. Or he was. Now he blinks and comes back to Earth (or whatever), and looked down at his hand and back up to Ric.

"Oops."

He raises his hand to his mouth for a second, stopping blood from trickling down his wrist in a way that would make any vampire in a half mild radius want to kill him for exhibition torture.

"I got some better shit for you to mess wit."

He looks away when the other man notices and speaks to him, shaking his head and grabbing a box of tissues off the nearby end-table and tossing it toward Remy, crossing his arms and walking over to peer at all of the assorted vaguely expensive-looking crap that's in the box. His mind is still lingering at home somewhere, and the sentimentality of it and pointlessness of it and the naivety of it, given the circumstances, irritates Julio with himself.

"Fuchi! Nasty. Use a damn kleenex, asshole, you're worse than Rahne. What's all this?"

Remy catches the box with his other hand and chuckles softly. He's starting to think that Julio only reacts with horrified disgust to things he responds to. It's an interesting mental note and he files it away for further inspection as he watches the younger man approach.

"De Underground is like de graveyard for weird tech an' parts. People get pulled in, so does stuff. So I went diggin'." He shrugs and sits back, pressing a handful of tissues against his palm.

He makes an appraising noise when Remy still manages to catch the box, even with one 'bad' hand, and swings around to the other side of the couch, picking up what looks like a decently advanced Micro-ATX, careful not to touch anything but the edges and also careful not to touch any thighs. Because Gambit. Never going to be not awkward. If there ever was a mutant not to get stuck alone in a room with, Gambit would be it.

Jamie Madrox would also be it, and Rictor has experienced alone-in-a-room-with-Madrox and this makes him feel fully rationalized in his jumpiness. It leaves him wondering which one of them is the x-factor.

"Tell me when you find a crazy Japanese floating motorcycle. I've always wanted to mess around with one of those."

Edited 2008-12-19 00:55 (UTC)

"I hate ninjas," he says in an offhand manner. Nothing personal, he's just sick of ninjas trying to fuck him up. They're really speedy and have lots of pointy edges and super annoying. That's the last time he saw one of those bikes... anyway.

He shifts, rolling his shoulders a bit and looking over at Julio, and not missing how he's very aggressively Not Looking At Him. More interesting tidbits. But probably not anything he needs to think on now.

Probably.

He's silent for a moment.

"Wanda cast a spell last night to keep Niko from rippin' my throat out."

"Yeah, well, I hate flunkies with laser blasters. We're even."

He digs further into the box, digging out an anti-static plastic bag and spreading it out on the coffee table, slowly spreading the contents out with the sort of gentle, pianist-like movements of a person who's hands, until very recently, were used for very delicate operation.

There is a small spot of blood on the table still, a little too close to the electronics for his liking, and Julio is reaching for a tissue to mop it up with an annoyed noise when Remy speaks again. He stops immediately, body going somewhat stiff for a second. It's the same as at home, like he has some sort of 'business' switch. Except at home, Layla Miller flipped it. Here, it usually seems to be Wanda.

"Cierre-- that's bad. You realize that's bad, right?"

Edited 2008-12-19 01:09 (UTC)

Obviously he realizes this is bad, because he's sitting in the living room going through computer parts so distracted he sliced his hand open. But he's still quiet for a bit.

"I fucked up. It happened so fast I didn't even blink. Didn't startle, didn't look at her funny. We didn't talk 'bout it after but I can tell she don't understand what happened."

He leans forward, elbows on his knees, and runs his good hand over his hair.

"She didn't freak out, though. I don't know, man. She didn't seem to really grasp what she did. Maybe I can pass it off as somethin' I did by accident."

He doesn't sound convinced.

"I think we need to tell her," he says, with a strange, bitter hint of steeliness in his normally aloof tenor. The motherboard in his hands is dropped immediately, his hands going to dig in his hair and then rub his forehead, cradling it between large fingers. He doesn't look at Remy but to sneak a glance at his eyes, barely meeting them, as if embarrassed and ashamed at what he's saying.

Which he is, to some degree. It's a complex situation for Rictor. He's certainly one of the people who holds some of the most sensitive information about the situation in his mind. He's certainly also a victim of self-same situation. And now he's a person who is increasingly fond of Wanda.

"Don't lie to her, you wanna get us all killed or worse? We should tell her what she can do, before she gets scared of herself and takes a city out because if that happens she is gonna hate us and it'll be years before she trusts anyone. I know."

"I know! I know." He's not even really yelling, just - a sort of harsh exasperated whisper, but not at Ric. It's gotten to the point of no return and he knows that, he knew it was coming but he didn't want to face it, because now he loves Wanda like she was always one of his inner circle and the idea of hurting her and putting her through this is terrible and he doesn't need to tell that to Julio.

"I jus'... felt like she should have some time, you know, to forget like she wanted." He shakes his head. "Thinkin' about her in terms of her powers an' what she can do is what got her broken to begin with."

Not even Xavier was able to help her. What the fuck are they supposed to do?

He lifts his head suddenly, staring at Remy with a vague expression for a moment before leaning back into the couch in a heap, slouching, looking like a petulant child even while over a decade of experience tries to come up with an articulate opinion and plan in his head.

After a moment, he sighs, and answers Remy in a resigned voice, the same kind he would use during a private discussion with Cable, years ago.

"I'm not saying you did wrong. I think you did right, and that she needed that, but the whole ignoring reality thing isn't going to work much for her very much longer. But we're not...treating her like a set of traits on paper. We're treating her like someone we care about who deserves to know that she's got things in her background that are risky. Like telling someone they got the genes for Huntington's disease or something, like, she deserves to know there are risks but we ain't gonna abandon her because she could blow up San Fran or something. Ignorance will just get people killed."

"No, you're right." Fuck, he wants a cigarette. The bleeding has stopped by now and he grabs a pack off the sofa's arm and pulls one out then passes the pack over to Julio.

"If there was some clear cut answer we was decidin' on that'd be a sign we're doin' it all wrong." He presses the pad of his index finger to the end of the cigarette and lights it by charging it, and takes a drag.

"We'll talk to her tonight."

He takes the offered cigarette, staring at it a moment. It's oddly relevant, considering the topic of the conversation. Julio never used to smoke, and he never used to be a big drinker. But these days, every day was a bad day, and he had two choices-- deal unhealthily or don't deal at all. Even he knew option a would keep him from being a ticking emotional timebomb. Maybe if Boom-Boom were around she could tell him how many seconds he had left.

Still, he needs this shit to deal. Before M-Day, if he was frustrated and his hands wouldn't stop shaking, he went out back and shook something else, to pieces, to dust. And then he was better.

"Share," he mutters, jabbing Remy's finger with the end of the tube, and little pieces of brown leaf flutter out onto the couch.

"We'll talk with her. Slow or fast as she wants us to. But we gotta talk eventually, because if I have learned any-fucking-thing in my life, especially as a member of a mutant private detective agency, it's that you always tell people the truth about themselves. That way you'll never have to remember what you said the last five times."

"Hey." Manners, Julio. Remy leans over and presses the end of his lit cigarette to the other man's to light it. With it between his lips, yes.

He sits back after and exhales smoke over their heads. He's been smoking since he was fifteen. Hasn't coughed once. He knows it won't be nicotine or alcohol that kills him. He's either going to be immortal or he's going to go out in something horrible and be remembered always for his crimes, and nothing else.

Why he knows this, he doesn't want to think on. Maybe it's fatalistic. Who cares.

"I can do it, you know. Fast hands fast talk, it's how we operate down south. But it ain't respectful. You don' pull that shit on people you care 'bout."

He flicks the end of his cigarette in one of the ash trays floating around the apartment.

"I think she wants to know, in a way."

Edited 2008-12-19 02:15 (UTC)

He stares awkwardly for a few seconds before gaining his train of thought back when Remy leans forward and pulls that on him, lighting the cigarette still dangling between his fingers with his own. And honestly, if that had been anyone else, a Jamie, Terry, Tabby, maybe even some stranger on the street (although 'anyone' is not accurate, either-- there was also Cable who would have made it awkward, but he is never visiting that mental image again), he would have made a joke. A really raunchy, juvenile one about how they were buttfucking.

But no. It's Gambit. So instead he just rests the cigarette on his wet lower lip and stares like a war veteran.

"Of course she wants to know. Even if her mind doesn't know something's different, her body's got to. That's what it was like for me. When I was like ten years old we used to think we were just unlucky, 'cause we always got hit by little tremors in our village and we never used to. So I would tell myself to go stand in the basement and my body wouldn't let me because that just would've made it worse. You can hide shit from anybody but yourself."

Remy's not doing it to make him jumpy. He's not even doing it to try and seduce him (though, you know, maybe in a week when this shit all settles down he'll see about that). He just likes people and he likes acting this way. He's no good with altruism or philanthropist woes and he's not the boy next door. He can make people blush and stammer and smile and laugh and, oftentimes, even more than that, and he gets off on it emotionally. Amongst other things.

(Considering his current state he is behaving pretty fucking well, actually. Enjoy that, Ric.)

"You can't lie, you can't change," he blows a lopsided smoke ring. "Well. Some of us can't." Be spookier, Gambit, it'll help. "... When my abilities manifested, I was in a movie theater."

He flicks his cigarette again. Doesn't say it. Everybody died.

"There was a man goin' round at de time findin' young mutants an' collectin' 'em. For de future, to help 'em wit their abilities, for everythin' that'd look good if you wrote it out on paper with certain words." This where you talk about Charles Xavier and the X-Men. Right? He's an X-Man, this is where it should go. But Gambit isn't a code name from Chuck, not by a long shot, and he wouldn't meet Storm until he was a married run out on his insane wife screwing around in Cairo, years and years later. "Nathaniel Essex."

Julio inhales deeply, burning the roof of his mouth and not even caring, and his face almost splits into a wry smile when Remy starts talking about how 'some of us can't,' but it's cut off when he says 'movie theater.' Without visibly gasping, his nostrils flare and the smoke leaks out of his nose messily as he takes the cigarette out of his mouth and speaks himself, honestly disturbed by the similarity of the story he's being told to his own. The color slowly drains from his face, leaving a normally olive complexion sallow and yellow.

"I'm sorry. About the theater. I didn't-- Scott and them didn't come pick you up?"

He doesn't know about things like this. In fact, he never really has known much about affairs that didn't directly concern him. As much as he complained, Julio and his peers has spent the majority of their youth under the careful eye of the X-Men, dealing only with what they were allowed to or dragged into.

His lips twist into a smile that's sharp and bitter. He'll never stop hating what he went through - hating Sinister for doing it and hating himself for being weak enough to let it happen. He was a street raised kid, able to fight and kill and steal and escape from any damn thing but he still failed. He lost control and he lost himself and he needed help.

He hates it with a special sort of acidic burning that'll never be eased. So he makes everyone else smile. Because deep down somewhere, he can't.

"They ain't omnipresent. I wasn't one of them for... long time, then. I'm old, Rictor. This was years an' years back. An' Mr. Sinister found... a few of us. A few of us he thought he could use."

He lights another cigarette, the other burned down to ash. His hands don't shake. They never do.

"He got Thren too, though by that time I couldn't take it any longer. The things he made us all do. It was worse than what he did to us." He laughs a little now, and it's hollow and distant. It's some time before he speaks after that.

"Sometimes I wonder what it'd be like to forget. If it'd be worth it. If I had a choice, if I could... just go away an' crawl inside myself. Like Wanda did. Would I?"

Stubbed out in the ashtray, Julio abandons his cigarette and hangs his head a little, before turning to look at Remy and do his very best to not look away this time. The more he's talking the more messed up he realizes the situation was, and is getting, and-- well, there's always a certain kind of sickness in your stomach when people tell you the truth.

That kind of self-disclosure turns people into humans in your head. And then you feel empathy. And it hurts. He clears his throat.

"Screw off, you're not that much older than me, and half the time you look younger because I'm busted. But what you're saying just proves I'm luckier than I thought I was, like, luckier than you and...Threnody is that chick, right? The one who just showed up?"

He takes a deep breath, but it shudders like the room is cold.

"You don't have a choice. I told you, nobody's got that choice because even if your mind forgets your body remembers. It's like, just because you're not looking in a mirror and can't remember what color your hair is, don't mean it's not still brown. Well, I mean, usually. I'm a special case."

"I don't begrudge nobody," he says quietly, after a nod. "Some of us, me an' her, we ain't lucky enough to get grabbed by de Xaviers of de world. I'm glad that most people are. An' I mean that."

Remy looks at him as he shudders, and has a moment where he decides against saying something. The look he gives Julio is incredulous and ironic, and very blatantly conveys that this, right now, is his grace period, and the next time he makes a crack about being busted that Remy will actually say something about it, and is being very polite right now because he's aware anything he'd say would make Ric scream like a little girl.

"I don't know what I'm sayin'. Maybe I jus'... react too emotionally to Wanda's situation when I should just sit down."

Edited 2008-12-19 03:57 (UTC)

"I know you don't. I'm just saying, it's alright if you're not particularly brimming with gratitude and hope for the future. I got understanding and the help I needed. You got abused. If I were you I would have gone nuts and formed the Brotherhood of Disenfranchised And Angry But Not Really Evil Mutants by now. Take your fucking credit when it's due, LeBeau."

He rubs at his eyes, very much noticing that look he's being thrown, and returns it with the best threat he can muster under the circumstances oh my god I sleep a room down from Madrox do not even try to make me your patsy, Gambit.

"No, you're not. You're trying your best to make sense of total nonsensical retarded bullshit that could get us all killed. You care about Wanda. You want to talk over-emotional and needs to sit the fuck down, you go take a look at M. I just wish I was more useful, but sorry man, you got stuck with the token sap."

He has to laugh at that, shaking his head and letting himself smile genuinely. It's even worse because he's still haunted by having had to go back to Sinister when Scott turned him away. Bitter and angry forever but, you know, the Brotherhood of Disenfranchised And Angry But Not Really Evil Mutants was called Marauders redux, though he should really... not say that.

His laughter even distracts him from some kind of return-fire 'Boy Madrox is not even in my league' look. How lucky.

"Rictor... you're a good man, an' I'm glad I got stuck wit you out of a lot o'people." Time for another cigarette. Chainsmoking helps, okay? "When I lost mine..." he trails off, lighting it. He doesn't need to describe what it was like. He couldn't move fast enough couldn't feel intensely enough, couldn't drink couldn't balance couldn't breathe. It was hell. "Me an' Rogue, we spent some time, thinkin'... vacation, no? For her, it was freedom. She ain't like us. But after a month of it I jus' couldn't take it, so Stormy, she come down an' pulled me outta there before I did or said anythin' stupid. An' I would have. I can't even remember, now, what I was thinkin' or feelin' in those weeks. It was this slow build to just... screamin' in my head."

When Remy starts laughing, no matter how serious the conversation is, it sends a warm emotion down Julio's spine, like a cup of coffee after a bad day. The corner of his own lips tugs upward in a lopsided but honest expression and he gives a shake of shaggy hair and a shrug that would make Atlas jealous. If anyone used to have the Earth on their shoulders, after all, it was Rictor.

"Good man, maybe-- I try these days. But a pretty fucking useless 'mutant.' I wish people would just be straight with me. I'm not saying nobody cares or they're just indulging me, but I wish at least Madrox and Guido would have the balls to be like, 'This is Rictor he drives our getaway car and never forgets to pay the rent.'"

He looks away again, back into the box of things, and starts picking them up and examining them. He stops at what looks like a weird other-planety SD card.

"Nobody gets it. They think I'm mad because I'm no longer self-sufficient or because I can't solve my problems by burying them a mile down anymore. I'm mad because I'm lonely. And if you ever tell anyone I will redecorate your pretty little face."

"This is Rictor," Remy announces, soft voice due to still laughing a little, trapped a bit in the catharsis of it, "he eats my food an' handles this box of technical shit."

Something touches him about Ric's admission. He gets lonely. Even 'lonely and cut off from everything that mattered even when you're in a room full of people who are loving it when you hit on them'. So he just sits there for a moment and looks at him, then promptly reaches out and messes his hair up with a grin and one arm around his shoulders.

"Aw, you don' gotta call me pretty. I like you already."

"I am also a decent plumber, just for your information." He manages a serious deadpan. Because he is serious about being a decent plumber, even if it was meant as a very necessary joke. When the arm lands around his shoulders, though, whatever laughter would have followed the statement is drown in his throat and only comes out as a strangled voice as the culturally obligatory iron curtain comes down again, replacing his confession with a comfortable layer of ramrod machismo.

"¡No manches, cabrón! It wasn't a compliment. It was me telling you you look like I could kick your ass!"

"Dejar de ser tan lindo, mon ami," he drawls, his Spanish in that Cajun accent somehow exotic, and now he is doing it on purpose as he runs his fingers through Ric's hair in a smooth motion as he removes himself from the other man and gets up to throw away the tissues he'd used to clean off his hand and go about getting a proper band-aid.

"Whatever, asshole," he spits out, with plenty of heat in his voice, but it's a mixture of anger and embarrassment and growing fondness, because he gets attached easily. It's all too close to the way most of his longest and deepest relationships have started-- somebody made Rictor literally want to eat his fucking hat, and inevitably, that person would be the one person he would rely on to, well--

Considering Boom-Boom and Shatterstar and Madrox, they would be the one person that keeps him just frustrated enough to not want to die. He chuffs again and slides down into a slouch on the couch again, crossing his legs and dropping them down with an unnecessarily loud bang on the coffee table.

"Get some sleep before you get an infection. You need both your hands."

Edited 2008-12-19 05:47 (UTC)

Remy doesn't mind him getting attached, but right now, he feels torn. There is a lot he could do with this situation, but he'd be a terrible person for it. He wants so bad to go out and take advantage of everything being presented to him but he's hurt and recoiling from that coma and from the memories inside of it - from Rogue most of all. It's not fair. Especially to people who are getting attached and especially to people he is starting to care for.

But this doesn't dampen the fact that he is a physical, sexual person and that the kinetic energy thrumming through him at all times pushes that drive higher. And it doesn't stop him from walking up behind Ric on the sofa and leaning over his head and shoulders and digging both hands into his hair in a sensual way and purring, "I sure do, hombre," before he's done and heading off to his bedroom to finally go the fuck to sleep.

Edited 2008-12-19 05:54 (UTC)

He's expecting Remy to actually leave, and so he's nearly ready to stand up off the couch and go back to sleep himself. Remy is over him without his having noticed though, his senses still feeling dulled even months later. The touch of warm fingers against his scalp is a shock and a discomfort but not unwelcome-- he hasn't felt liked by someone he hasn't known since he was sixteen in a long time, but the intimacy is still a reminder of Pietro's forced, smothering fraternity or the dupe's teeth against the shell of his ear before--

He bolts upright when the contact ends and moves away, heading to a bedroom on the other side of the apartment and glowering over his shoulder as well as he can muster.

"¿Qué es eso? Gambit, man, what is wrong with you?"

"Mucho hay de malo en mí, Rictor," is all the response he gets, his voice floating from the other room, before Gambit's bedroom door clicks shut.

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if you love something set it free [complete]

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