Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

“Honey! I'm home!” Rogue calls out as she enters the house, closing the front door behind her. Gambit makes no response, he must be busy elsewhere in the house, but she smiles to herself anyway. Almost a year of being married, and she still ain't quite used to it. Of coming home. Of having someone to come home to.

She sets her bag down and rolls her head to either side, trying to work the tension out of her neck. The team had to pull an overnight double, and she’s practically dead on her feet. She's gotta meet the team again tomorrow morning, but she's got the rest of today off at least, and she's going to enjoy what she can of it.

She starts down the hall to the living room while she considers if she wants to grab a bite to eat or hit the shower first, but her choice is made easier when she smells breakfast cooking.

Rogue enters the living room and finds the cats perched around the room in their highest hiding places, like they do when Gambit gets the vacuum out. She looks up at them and frowns. Breakfast cooking usually meant they’d be in the kitchen begging for scraps. Why are they hiding in here?

“What’s up with y’all?” she asks them.

The cats make no reply and only continue to stare at her with eyes as big as saucers.

She shakes her head and walks over to the doorway to go into the kitchen, but as she goes through it, she hears a quiet tinkling sound coming from inside.

If the cats were her first clue that something’s amiss, this should’ve been the second.

Rogue follows the sound to its source. She comes around the end of the counter to find her husband, on his hands and knees and scrubbing at the linoleum floor.

Now, that in itself is not strange. Gambit often complained that the mop didn’t get the floor as clean as he could with a sponge and some good old-fashioned elbow grease, and consequently, he’d scrub it clean while on his hands and knees.

No. What is strange about this situation is the clothes he’s got on to do it.

“What in the hell are you wearing?”

Gambit stands and Rogue is faced with the full-frontal view of his outfit.

A French maid costume, complete with a white pinafore over a black dress, frilly short sleeves, and an appliqué pink heart right in the center of his chest.

He hangs his head, and Rogue can see then that he also has a pair of cat ears protruding from the top of his head, the fur on them just a shade darker than his hair.

“Remy got himself cursed, chère.”

Still in shock, she asks, “What? How? When? You was fine when I left yesterday!”

Gambit throws his sponge down into the bucket with a soft ker-plunk! before he wipes his hands on the apron of his pinafore. “It a long story.”

“Then you’d better start talking.”

He winces. “You remember Mad Jim Jaspers?”

Rogue crosses her arms over her chest. “Not really, but go on.”

“Well, he run the Crooked Market in Otherworld now. And he didn’t much care for me selling without a permit, and when I offered to make it up to him by bringing him some tea from back home, he cared for that even less.” He plucks at his clothes. “Did this to me. Told me he could just make tea and whatever else he wanted, and then left me like this ‘cause he thought I needed to learn to be more considerate of others.” He blinks. “Huh. Not that long.”

She nods her head slowly. “So… why don’t you just take it off?”

“Won’t come off.” Gambit shakes his head, clearly frustrated, and there’s that tinkling sound again. Rogue realizes then that he’s got a leather collar on, a small silver bell attached and hanging just at the hollow of his throat.

Suddenly, the oven timer dings, and Gambit’s head snaps to the sound, eerily reminiscent of one of the cats when they hear a mouse inside the walls.

Rogue watches as he goes to the oven, in little black kitten heels that click with each step, and bends to open the door and retrieve a casserole dish from within, picking it up with the end of his apron so as not to burn his hands.

But while he’s bent over headfirst in the oven, Rogue notices another disturbing development.

Peeking out from just under the end of his skirt is a tail.

Gambit sets the pan on the stovetop before leaning over to smell the steam wafting off it. He sighs. “C’est bon… French toast casserole, chѐre. Thought you’d like a sweet pick-me-up after the night you must’ve had, so– Hey!”

Rogue’s walked over and grabbed the end of his tail. She can feel the muscles and bones straining under the reddish-brown fur in her grasp as he tries to pull it loose, and she quickly drops it in shock.

She looks up at him and asks, “...it’s real?”

“It real,” he says sadly and with a small flick of his tail.

“And these…?” Rogue breathes as she reaches to touch his cat ears.

Her suspicion is confirmed when he pulls his ears back and ducks his head away. “Careful, chѐre! They sensitive.”

Rogue drops her hand. “Holy shit,” she murmurs.

“Oui.” Gambit hangs his head again in defeat, the effect only amplified when he droops his ears down, too.

“Sugar… this ain’t good,” she says gently.

“You don’t think I don’t know that?” he says without any heat. “Woke up with a tail this morning.” He points at the bucket of water from his cleaning. “Third time today that I done scrubbed that floor. It damn near clean enough to eat off of, and yet I’m standing here fighting myself not to scrub it again. It the curse, Rogue. It like a compulsion. Can’t help it. Can’t stop it.”

“We gotta get that getup off you, then. Break the curse.”

Gambit makes a frustrated noise. “It ain’t coming off. I already tried. Even took scissors to it. Even tried charging it with my powers. Nothing worked.”

“Well, you ain’t tried me yet,” Rogue says as she takes hold of his skirt in her hands and finds the seam running down the side. She grasps the fabric in her fists on either side of it, and then gives it a tug firm enough to pull a door off its hinges.

And nothing happens.

Gambit starts to protest, but Rogue shushes him while she steadies herself, sets her feet apart on the floor, and yanks on the fabric with enough force to rend a car in two.

Nothing.

She pants a little from the exertion. “Damn.”

“Told you,” he says. “It magic.”

As a woman who frequently solved problems in the most direct way possible, sometimes quite literally head-on and fist-first, the tricky, slippery nature of spells and curses and magic had always made Rogue uneasy.

She lets the fabric of Gambit's skirt slip from her hands. “I hate magic,” she says petulantly.

He scoffs. “Preaching to the choir, chère. And you ain't even the one stuck in the m– mrowww!”

Gambit claps both his hands over his mouth as he and Rogue stare at each other in wide-eyed shock.

She blinks. “Did you just…?”

“Mm-hmm,” he says with a vigorous nod and muffled behind his hands still.

“And you ain't do it on purpose?”

“Mm-mm,” he shakes his head then, and the motion causes his bell to tinkle again.

“That's it,” Rogue says as she wraps her hand around his elbow and begins leading him out of the kitchen. “Come on.”

Gambit takes his hands from his mouth to ask, “Where we going?” before he stumbles a little in his heels as Rogue drags him to the front door.

“To see somebody who knows about magic.”

“Break your own bloody curse.” Betsy doesn’t even bother looking up from the map of Otherworld she’s currently poring over. “I’m busy.”

The three of them are standing in the make-shift war room she’s put together in Excalibur’s lighthouse, and after Rogue and Gambit had explained the situation, she’d been unwilling to help.

Gambit twitches one of his cat ears in annoyance, and Rogue pats his arm before she says sweetly, “Betsy. Bets. Neither one of us knows anything about magic. That’s why we come here. We need your help.”

Betsy looks up finally. “Anti-mutant sentiments are growing in Otherworld. We may be on the brink of war, and if it comes to that, I can’t be sure the Krakoan council will provide me with assistance or if we will be fighting alone.” She sighs heavily. “I am busy.”

“And we know that you are,” Rogue rushes to say. “But don’t you think you could spare a sec just to help us out some?”

Betsy returns to looking at her map before she picks up one of the loose sheets of paper strewn across the table. “Who did you say did this to you?”

“Mad Jim Jaspers,” Gambit says like he’s reading the name on a wanted poster.

Looking over the paper in her hand still, Betsy says, “Jaspers. I’ve met him. Tricky fellow. He’s not unlike my brother Jamie.” She crumples the paper in her fist and tosses it to the floor. “He seems to find amusement in playing with others. You must have amused him.”

Gambit bends down to pick up the crumpled paper and place it back on the table. “If that’s what you wanna call it.”

Betsy holds her chin as she thinks. “Strange. Jaspers is an Omega-level, reality-altering mutant. Why would he use magic on you?”

“Reckon he wanted it to last.”

Unsatisfied with that answer, Betsy returns to looking at her map. She absently knocks the crumpled paper back to the floor so that she can see the section underneath it. Gambit bends down to pick it up again and set it back on the tabletop.

Rogue and Betsy exchange a glance before they both look at Gambit. Still watching him, Betsy slides the paper ball off the table and to the floor again. And Gambit once again bends down to retrieve it and put it on the table.

“Uh, sugar? What’re you doing?” Rogue asks with an awkward little laugh.

“Being considerate,” Gambit answers through gritted teeth.

Betsy muses aloud then, “I wonder…” She takes the crumpled paper in her hand and tosses it across the room. She turns back to Gambit. “Fetch.”

He looks irritated by the command, but he still walks to the other side of the room to get it. When he bends down this time, though, Betsy gasps softly.

Quiet, so that Gambit doesn’t hear, she asks Rogue, “Oh, my, he’s got a tail now, too?”

Rogue shrugs. “Yep.”

Gambit returns with the paper ball. He sets it on the table. “Ain’t a dog for you to be barking orders at,” he says in annoyance.

Betsy takes it in her hand again and throws it back to the other side of the room, and Gambit scoffs. But this time Betsy turns to him and says, “Stay.”

And Gambit remains standing in front of them.

Rogue asks gently, “Can you move at all, sugar?”

He clenches his fists a few times as he must struggle to move, and then he shakes his head with a soft tinkle from the bell. “Non.”

“Oh, dear.” Betsy sighs. “It's as I thought.”

Rogue’s still watching Gambit as he stares at his feet in the heels, but she turns to Betsy then. “Care to enlighten us, Cap?” she says with a tight smile.

“An obedience curse,” Betsy clarifies, her voice grave. “Nasty business, those. Usually the fare of disgruntled spouses or exasperated parents, they take away the recipient's will. I’ve heard of them but had never actually seen the effects of one in action. No respectable witch would make such a spell, but I’m sure they abound on the black market.”

“Or the Crooked Market,” Gambit mutters.

“Jaspers must’ve come into possession of one in his dealings there.” Betsy shakes her head. “I was mistaken. You didn’t amuse him; he made an example of you.”

“Well, ‘least we know what it is now.” Rogue asks then, “But how do we get it off him? And why the outfit and the ears and tail?”

Betsy shrugs. “I haven’t a clue.”

Rogue crosses her arms over her chest. “Betsy, we come here ‘cause you’re the only one of us that got any experience with this magic mumbo-jumbo. Don’t tell me you’ve got nothing.”

Betsy turns back to her map of Otherworld. “Powerful magic like that… you’ll likely need to find the witch who made the spell in the first place.”

“And how we supposed to do that?” Gambit asks with an incredulous swish of his tail. “The yellow pages?”

“Perhaps you should try the Crooked Market? You seem to have quite the luck finding magic there,” Betsy jokes before saying in a dismissive tone, “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a war to plan.”

Gambit looks like he’s going to say something catty, so Rogue speaks first. “Thanks, Betsy,” she says, even if she’s a little frustrated that they’re leaving with more questions than answers.

“Yeah, for nothing,” Gambit mutters under his breath, and Rogue shoots him a glare.

“We’ll leave you to it then,” she says with a sigh as she starts walking towards the door to leave.

“Chère!” Gambit whines, and Rogue turns back to him.

“What?”

He gestures emphatically to his feet, still glued in place from Betsy’s earlier instruction to stay.

“Oh, right.” She’d forgotten. “Remy, come,” she orders.

And he snaps to it, quickly clicking over in his heels to stand next to her. “Ain’t gotta say it like that, Rogue,” he complains. “Already told you I ain’t a dog.”

“No,” Betsy says in amusement, still looking over her papers and map. “You’re a pussycat.”

Gambit narrows his eyes at Betsy’s backside, and Rogue could swear she hears him growl, low and seated deep in the back of his throat.

She takes his arm to start dragging him out of the room and down the winding staircase of the lighthouse.

“Pussycat, my ass,” he grumbles as they start down the stairs.

“She ain’t wrong, sugar,” Rogue points out gently. “And seems like you're getting worse.”

“Je sais. Be feeling worse,” he says, sounding tired all of the sudden. “Don’t know how much more I can fight it.”

“We’ll get you sorted soon enough. Don’t you worry,” she reassures him, only half-believing it herself.

Gambit smiles at her a little. “Where we headed now anyway?”

But before she can answer, he stumbles on the steps, almost falling flat on his face if it weren’t for Rogue quickly catching him.

“You still ain’t used to those shoes yet? Come on now, the heel on ‘em ain’t any higher than your boots, sugar,” she says, laughing a little.

“Ain’t the shoes that’s the problem, Rogue,” he responds, his voice a pitch higher than normal and strung tight as a strand of barbed wire.

And they both watch in horror as he’s now able to pull his right foot out of the heel, but only because his foot is no longer a foot.

It’s a cat’s paw.

“Oh, God,” Rogue gasps and Gambit can only wheeze in shock.

He gingerly sets his new paw on the step, testing it with weight.

“...Does it hurt?” Rogue breathes.

“Non,” he says quietly before he spreads his toes, flexing his claws a little. “Don’t feel none too good neither, though.”

“Come on,” she says, more determined than before, as she wraps her arm around him to help him down the stairs, carrying his discarded heel in her other hand.

“Well, where we going?” he asks, still staring at his paw as he tries to navigate the steps with it.

“To talk to some folks who can fix just about anything.”

“Oh, my stars and garters,” Beast says softly in astonishment. He keeps taking his glasses off and putting them on again like he can't quite believe his eyes.

“Damn,” Forge says simply, pushing his welding visor up.

They're all standing in Beast’s lab, staring at Gambit's legs. Just in the time it took for him and Rogue to get from the lighthouse to here, both his legs had changed, shifting into the furry hindquarters of a cat.

Filled with a growing sense of panic, Rogue can't even bring herself to feel bad for interrupting their little genius get-together. The two of them had been working on putting some fancy, mechanical thingamajig together when she’d burst through the door, not even having bothered to knock first, and with Gambit in tow.

“Boys,” she announces. “We need your help. Now.”

Beast settles on keeping his glasses on. “What has happened?” he asks.

“Remy got himself cursed bad. And it's changing him.”

“We can see,” Forge says, looking Gambit up and down, his expression unreadable.

“Rogue…” Beast hesitates. “You know that magic is not my forte. I am a man of science, not spells. What exactly do you expect me to do?”

“Anything, Hank,” she says, a little desperation seeping into her voice. “Just try something.”

Gambit hasn't said a word since they arrived, and Forge is still staring at him, eyes narrowed, when he asks Rogue, “What's wrong with him?” He addresses Gambit then. “Cat got your tongue?” he says without an ounce of jest, like he's verbally poking at him with a stick out of curiosity.

And Gambit pulls his ears back as his face contorts into an ugly snarl and he hisses at him, like any cornered cat would.

“Remy!” Rogue exclaims, stricken, and she goes to him as he doubles over and begins violently shaking his head, the bell ringing shrilly. “Say something, sugar.”

He gasps. “Can't keep on fighting it, chère.” He clutches at his head. “Can't keep on…”

Rogue wraps an arm around him to help support him before she looks to Beast, her eyes pleading.

Beast goes to take a step towards them when Forge puts his arm out to stop him.

“I’d advise against that, Hank,” he says, his face hard, like a doctor giving a terminal diagnosis. “That's bad magic he's got on him. Powerful, too. No telling what could happen, we start messing around with that.”

Beast looks at Rogue and Gambit again before saying to Forge, “I understand your concern and acknowledge the risks. But he is our friend. We must do what we can to help him.”

Forge drops his arm and only chuckles a little while he shakes his head in resignation. “Don't even know why I bother. You want me to fire up the X-ray or the MRI?” He looks at Gambit and raises an eyebrow. “Or the CAT machine?”

“We'll begin with the simplest. X-ray.”

“All right,” Forge gives Rogue and Gambit one last wary look before he removes his welding visor and leaves.

Beast says to Rogue then, “Bring him to the back. I can examine him there.”

So Rogue helps Gambit on his strange cat legs as they follow Beast to his examination room.

Once inside, Beast pats the examining table, “Sit here, please.”

Gambit hops up on the table, and at the sight of him sitting there, in the maid costume still and with his cat legs dangling over the edge of the table, it makes Rogue’s chest feel tight. Something so wrong with him, and ain't a thing she can do to fix it.

It's enough to make any girl feel a little helpless.

Beast tries to take one of Gambit's legs in his hand, but he keeps shying away from his reach. “I'm not going to hurt you, but I need to examine you,” Beast says gently.

Rogue sighs. “Let him look at you, Remy,” she orders, feeling exhausted suddenly. She says to Beast then, “You gotta tell him what to do, Hank. It's the curse. Took his will. That's why he wasn't talking earlier. He started getting panicky on the way here, and I forgot I'd told him to hush up.”

“Oh, dear,” Beast says in response as Gambit immediately complies and lets Beast take hold of his leg.

And Rogue watches Beast as he slowly turns Gambit's leg in one hand while using the other to palpate along the length, testing the give of his flesh and the feel of the bones and joints beneath the fur.

“Are you in pain?” he asks, holding Gambit's paw in his hand as he works what used to be his ankle back and forth.

“Non,” he says, staring at his paw. “Feel real funny, though.”

“How so?” Beast asks then, intrigued, before letting Gambit's leg and paw drop from his grasp.

“Like I ain't me,” he says simply. “My head… Can't focus. Keep losing track of my thoughts. Keep getting distracted. Everything too loud, too bright.” He reaches down to scratch at the fur on the back of his leg. “And I'm itchy as hell, Doc.”

Beast chuckles. “You become accustomed to it, I assure you,” he says, gesturing to his own furry form.

He goes to retrieve his stethoscope then and returns to listen to Gambit's chest.

Rogue hugs her arms around herself. “Anything, Hank?” she asks while Beast has the end of the stethoscope right over the pink heart on Gambit's chest.

Beast listens to his heart and lungs for a moment before he pulls away. “If what I suspect is happening to him is, we can only hope that the process will continue to be painless for him. I believe an X-ray will tell us more.” He turns back to Gambit then. “Will you allow me to take an X-ray?”

Rogue sighs, heavier than before. “Let him x-ray you, sugar.”

So Gambit hops back down off the table and follows Beast to wherever he keeps his radiological equipment, his steps still a little unsteady on his cat legs, and just as the door is closing behind them, Rogue can hear Beast ask, “Could you perhaps remove your, uh, collar?”

Left alone in the examining room, Rogue drops her head into her hands as she fights back tears. An overnight double shift, no sleep in more than a day, no food in almost as long, and now her husband's half cat. She could really use a break right about now.

Only a few minutes drag by before Gambit, Beast, and now Forge as well return. Gambit goes to sit on the examining table again while the other two get the X-ray films put up on the illuminator box on the wall.

They look normal enough to Rogue. Besides the bright spot at his throat from the bell and the clear view of his tail in the shot from the side, everything seems fine, but Beast gasps in surprise, which sets her nerves right back on edge.

“How remarkable…” he says quietly in awe.

“You thinking what I'm thinking?” Forge says then.

“Yes. But we don't know how long it may take or even how thorough the transformation will be.”

Transformation? Rogue doesn't like the sound of that. “You two gonna keep whispering like a couple of schoolgirls or you gonna tell us what the hell is going on with my husband?”

Beast gives her an apologetic look before he goes to his bookshelf. He selects one of the hardcover reference books and lays it open on his desk.

Gambit comes over then to look at it, too, letting his curiosity get the better of him.

Beast flips it open to a page that shows an anatomical diagram of a house cat’s skeleton. “Humans and most mutants have between 32 and 34 vertebrae, while felines possess 52 to 53 vertebrae, depending upon tail length. It is part of the reason why they are so nimble and agile.”

He returns to the light box to point at Gambit's X-ray films. “Remy has 53 vertebrae.”

Rogue shakes her head in disbelief. “Now, you said ‘most’ mutants, Hank. He's always been a little more agile than the rest of us. How do you know he ain't always had that many?”

“I had precisely the same thought.” He puts another X-ray film up beside the others. “So I went through his medical file and found this.”

It looks pretty much the same to Rogue, but Beast grabs a pointer and begins counting the vertebrae on Gambit's old X-ray. “...30, 31, 32, 33. 33 vertebrae, Rogue.”

“Well, he didn't have a tail then. Maybe that's all it is.”

“Ain't just the tail, chère,” Gambit says softly then, and Rogue looks at him. “Think it time we quit pussyfooting around it.” He gives her a sad smile. “I'm turning into un chat.”

“No. No.” Rogue slowly shakes her head again. “Not on my watch, you ain't.” She turns back to Beast. “Hank. Tell me how to stop it.”

“I do not know,” he says quietly. “I have very little experience with magic, let alone with any spells of this caliber.”

“Ain't there something we can do?” she pleads.

“Most likely, he will continue to change. Whether it will be a partial or complete transformation, I do not know. How to slow or stop or reverse the process, I do not know that either. But if at any point he is in pain, I can offer treatment to ease it, but that is all that I can think to do at this time.”

They're all startled suddenly by the sound of Gambit slamming the reference book closed. He'd been flipping through it, looking over the diagrams, when something within its pages must have spooked him.

“Mon Dieu…” he says quietly, his eyes wide and the end of his tail twitching anxiously.

Rogue's about to ask Beast for his best wild guess, even a shot in the dark for what to do when Forge says, “I know you're not asking, but my advice? You take him right back to whoever put that curse on him.”

She scoffs. “And what? Ask them real nice to take it off him?”

And Forge gives her a look that makes her think that maybe he might know what he's talking about. “No, Rogue.” He crosses his arms over his chest, his face inscrutable.

“You beg.”

“You finished?” Rogue asks as Gambit struggles in her grasp, hissing and spitting in frustration as she holds him down on the mattress, his bell making a hell of a whole lotta racket with his thrashing.

When they'd gotten home from their fruitless visit with Beast and Forge, they'd had a quick supper of the previous night’s leftovers after Rogue had to convince Gambit to throw out his spoiled casserole from breakfast. She hadn't been able to finish her plate, though, after her stomach had turned at the sight of him lapping at his water glass like a cat.

And washing up the dishes from supper had just set him right back on his cleaning kick from that morning, and when bedtime had finally rolled around, Rogue had found him up to his elbows deep cleaning their bathroom.

He'd thrown a hissy fit when she pulled him out, and the only thing she could think to do was hold him down until he tired himself out.

What she hadn't counted on was it taking so damn long.

“Stop fighting me,” she demands in frustration, and she remembers then that her words are a spell unto themselves.

Gambit gives one last half-hearted squirm before going limp in her grasp, panting a little from the exertion.

“Sorry, sugar.” Rogue lets him go and sits up. “But you been in there scrubbing away like Cinderella for over an hour, and I ain't had a shower in what feels like days.”

“Can't help myself, Rogue,” he says quietly. “It the curse.”

He turns his head a little then as he gets distracted by a noise that she can't hear, his attention focused on the other side of the room and his cat ears making minute movements as he tries to pinpoint the sound.

But Rogue couldn't care less about some sound. She'd noticed something far more important while Gambit had been throwing his little tantrum.

She gently takes his face in her hands to get him to look at her. “Let me look at you, Remy,” she says softly.

And when he looks back up at her, she takes a sharp breath.

His eyes… She had missed the exact moment that it’d happened, but at some point during the day they'd changed. They're still the same color they’ve always been, but the shape of them is just like a cat’s now, his pupils like black slits in pools of crimson.

Rogue slowly rubs her thumbs against the skin under his eyes while he gazes up at her, and a strange sort of melancholy despair settles on her.

She's losing him. This curse is gonna steal him away from her, and just like sand slipping between her fingers, there ain't a thing she can do to stop it.

Gambit chuckles softly at the look on her face. “That bad, huh?” He brings a hand up to hold against one of hers where it rests on his cheek still, and they both try to ignore the fact that he’s got claws there now, too.

Rogue sniffles. “We gotta figure out how to get this curse off you, sugar.”

“I’m all ears, chѐre,” he says with a sad smile, wiggling his cat ears for emphasis.

So Rogue puts on her thinking cap. “You said Mad Jim did this to you ‘cause he said you needed to learn to be more considerate of others.”

“Oui,” Gambit says, nodding along. “Whatever that supposed to mean.”

“And he put you in this thing to do it, right?” She runs her hand over the pink heart on his chest.

“D’accord…” he says, like he’s not quite sure where she’s going with this.

“Well, what if the reason you been cleaning all willy-nilly is ‘cause nobody’s been telling you any different?”

Gambit looks like she’s lost him, so Rogue asks then.

“What do maids do, Remy?”

“Clean,” he says, his cat ears perking up again. “And cook, I suppose.”

“Well, sure, but why do they do those things?”

His eyes flick back and forth a moment as he thinks. “‘Cause somebody asked ‘em to?” he tries.

“Right. Butlers, maids, they’re all servants–”

“–who supposed to serve,” he finishes, catching on.

“So maybe that's how we break your curse, sugar.”

“By serving somebody?” he asks, brows furrowed in confusion. “But who am I gonna serve?”

“Me,” Rogue says then. “Serve me, Remy.”

And Gambit goes still and just stares at her with his strange cat eyes, unblinking. Off-put, she's starting to think that he's not going to play along when he says quietly, “Oui, maîtresse.”

Whoa. Rogue blinks in surprise. “That you or the curse talking?”

“C’est moi.” He considers a moment before adding, “But it not not the curse.”

“Okay,” Rogue exhales slowly. “We're doing this. Okay.”

“How do you want me to serve you, mistress?” Gambit asks then, in impeccably formal French.

Rogue frowns. It's not that she can't understand him, she can parle le lingo just fine, but she's wondering why he's doing it, and now, of all times. “Sugar, why are you–”

“Je parle français?” He smiles at her, and Rogue can't tell if his canines look sharper than she remembers them being. “I'm a French maid, ain't I? Just playing my part, chère.”

“Yeah. Guess they don't make Cajun maids.”

He smirks. “Quel dommage.”

“‘Less we counting you.”

“Only for you, mon amour.” He settles a little more on the bed before saying eagerly in French, “What do you ask of me, mistress?”

“Uh.” Rogue hadn't thought this far ahead. She looks around the room, trying to think of something to keep him busy. Nothing jumps out at her, and she glances back down at Gambit then. He's still just lying there, waiting patiently.

She's thinking that she really kind of just wants to take a shower and pass out in bed right now instead of bossing her husband around to break his stupid curse, and then it clicks.

Why not kill two birds with one stone?

“Undress me,” she says suddenly, and Gambit raises his eyebrows in surprise at the request. “Don't get too excited. I'm just gonna take a shower.” And when he smirks then like he's going to say something suggestive, she adds, “Alone.”

He chuckles. “Oui, maîtresse.”

Rogue stands first and takes a few steps backwards so that she's about halfway between their bed and the bathroom and then she waits.

Gambit rises slowly, swinging his cat legs over the side of the bed before carefully approaching her. He steps up right in front of her, and Rogue holds her hand out for him to remove her glove.

He gently pinches the end of one finger to pull it loose, slips it off, and lets it drop to the floor. He presses a featherlight kiss to the inside of her wrist before taking her other hand, removing the glove, and kissing that wrist as well.

Letting her hands fall from his, he moves to kneel on the floor, taking one boot in hand and helping her step out of it before doing the same with the other.

Gambit stands again before reaching to take the zipper at the neck of her suit between his fingers. His eyes flick to hers, asking permission, and Rogue bites her lip momentarily before nodding her head.

He slowly slides the zipper down, all the way down to where it ends low over her pelvis, revealing tender skin and her underthings, and she shivers from the sudden feeling of cool air against her exposed skin.

Gambit moves to stand behind her, taking one open side of her suit in hand as he goes to slip it over her shoulder so Rogue can pull her arm loose. He does the same with the other side before dipping his head down to nuzzle his cheek against her bare shoulder.

The unexpected soft scrape of his whiskers on her skin makes her gasp, and even the fleeting thought that she can't tell if they're even his anymore or a cat’s now like so much of the rest of him does little to cool the heat that's building low in her belly.

He pulls away again to work her suit down over her hips and legs, and Rogue steps free of it, standing in only her bra and underwear then.

Gambit leaves her suit in a heap on the floor in favor of trying to undo the hooks on the front of her bra, and he's able to get the top two undone before Rogue puts her hand over his to stop him.

She laughs a little and says softly, “Think I can do this part myself, sugar.”

And her laugh only grows when Gambit actually pouts.

“Wait for me here,” she tells him then.

“Oui, maîtresse,” he acquiesces, if not a little petulantly.

Rogue steps away from him, still holding his hand until the distance between them forces her to let it slip from her grasp, and she goes into the bathroom and closes the door behind her.

Once inside and by herself, she leans back against the door and takes a moment to compose herself. But then she buries her face in her hands and laughs in disbelief.

Gambit's most of the way to being a cat, and it's scaring the hell out of her.

But that don't mean she's any less attracted to him.

Rogue undoes her bra and slips it off before sliding her underwear down and stepping out of them and into the shower for a quick rinse.

When she finishes getting cleaned up, she wraps a towel around herself and stops a moment in front of the mirror to give her reflection a stern talking to.

“You're gonna go out there. You're gonna let him dress you. And then you're gonna go to bed.” She gives her reflection a hard look. “No funny business.”

Rogue goes to the door and takes a deep breath before she opens it and steps out.

Gambit's standing exactly where she left him, but she knows that even without the curse, he would've waited for her.

Because he has always waited for her.

And even standing there in the maid costume and his cat legs and his slit eyes, it's still him, and he's still the man she loves.

…But for how much longer?

Rogue lets her towel drop to the floor, and she doesn't miss the way Gambit's pupils dilate at the sight.

“Dress me, Remy,” she orders before taking a shuddery breath. “Hurry. ‘Fore I change my mind.”

“Oui, maîtresse.”

He goes to get her a nightgown from her dresser, and they watch each other as he approaches her again, slowly rolling her nightgown up in his hands to more easily slip it over her head.

Rogue lifts her arms up, not breaking eye contact with Gambit as he drops her nightgown down over her, and she shivers as the cool, silky fabric falls across her shower-warm skin.

“Now get me my socks and underwear.”

“Oui, maîtresse,” he says, a little breathless.

Rogue walks over to the bed while he retrieves her underthings and hosiery, and she stands still as he returns to her and kneels on the floor beside the bed.

“Vos lingerie, maîtresse,” he says softly, holding her underwear out for her to step into.

She was going to just put them on herself, but now presented with this image, she thinks, Why not?

Rogue holds her nightgown up slightly as she steps into them, and as Gambit begins sliding them up her legs, she tries to keep the talk she had with herself in the bathroom mirror in mind.

But it’s real damn hard.

The slow drag of his claws against the skin of her thighs as he pulls them up, careful so as not to snag the fabric or her, makes her skin break out into goosebumps, and she has to stifle a breathy gasp as he gets them settled with one last firm tug.

Gambit pulls away then, running his hands down her legs as he goes, and Rogue has to take a few shaky breaths before she sits on the edge of the bed, ready for her socks.

He takes one of her feet into his lap over the apron of his pinafore and slips her sock on. Rogue watches him and remembers how he used to tease her about wearing socks to bed, like she could help getting cold in her sleeping.

She examines him now, while he’s got his head down and is busy with her socks. He doesn’t seem to have changed further since she took her shower, but he hasn’t started changing back, either.

Rogue tries to smile a little when she asks him softly, “How you feeling, sugar?”

“Don’t feel none too worse, which a plus.” Gambit tugs her second sock on and sets her feet back on the floor. He looks up at her then, and his strange cat eyes look so sad and resigned it breaks her heart a little more. “But don’t feel better, neither.”

“Yeah,” Rogue whispers, and that feeling of despair she had felt earlier comes back, heavier and thicker than before.

It's not working.

They’re not going to be able to break the curse.

Rogue feels her face tighten as she fights to not start crying.

“Non, non. No tears, chѐre,” Gambit says softly. “I ain’t going nowhere. Still be here with you.”

“But you’re going to be a fucking cat, Remy.”

He shrugs. “There worse things to be. Boys seem happy enough.” He frowns then. “Where they been keeping themselves anyhow? Feel like I ain’t seen ‘em all day.”

“I don’t know, but they’ve been in hiding since you come home like this.” Rogue wipes at her eyes. “They can’t stand to see you like this, neither, I reckon,” she says quietly.

“It the dress, ain’t it?” Gambit jokes then. “Hey, maybe it’ll finally come off once I’m full cat. You think?”

“That ain’t funny, Remy.”

“It a little funny,” he says with a chuckle, bringing his tail around to curl it in front of his knees.

“I hate you,” Rogue says, but there’s no bite to the words.

“Je sais.”

“Why’d you have to go and get yourself cursed?”

“Didn’t do it on purpose, chѐre.”

“No, you was just stupid and reckless and didn’t think,” Rogue says bitterly.

“C’est vrai,” he agrees sadly before asking in a lighter tone like he's trying to cheer her up, “Let Remy make it up to you?”

She sniffles. “...How you gonna do that?” she asks, skeptical. All she wants is him back to normal, and that ain't happening any time soon.

But Gambit grins then, and his canine teeth are definitely sharper than they should be. “How may I be of service, mistress?” he asks in French and with just the slightest lisp as his tongue comes up against the back of his teeth, and then he sits with his hands in his lap, waiting for her answer.

But Rogue's tired of playing this game. She doesn't want to tell him what to do; she wants her husband back.

She wipes the back of her hand across her eyes again before reaching down to slip her fingers under his collar, and he gasps in surprise as she tugs him towards her.

“Get up here and service these lips,” she orders, trying to keep her voice playful even as it still wavers a little from her tears.

And Gambit laughs as he complies, still on his knees as he leans up and kisses her. “Terrible,” he says against her lips between kisses. “Like something I'd say, chère.”

“I learned from the best.”

His answering chuckle breaks off into a low moan as Rogue slides her hands into his hair, lightly scritching her fingers against his cat ears.

She laughs softly at the look on his face. “That feel good, sugar?”

He lets his eyes fall half-closed as he leans into her touch. “Tres bon…” he sighs.

While she gives his ears a good workover, Gambit starts placing little kisses against her cheeks before he switches to tenderly licking the salt from her tears away.

But Rogue gasps at the feeling of his tongue. Sandpaper rough, just like a cat’s.

She wraps her arms around him then, and he makes a startled catlike mew as she lies back on their bed, pulling him up with her.

Gambit settles comfortably between Rogue's legs, and she runs one down the back of his thigh, the fur soft against her skin, but she starts in surprise when he brushes his tail across her leg in answer.

“How much control you got of that thing?” she asks out of morbid curiosity.

“Won't be sword fighting with it or nothing.” He smirks as he swishes it back and forth a few times. “But enough,” he says as he runs his tail down her leg again, slower than before and letting the end curl lightly around her ankle.

Whatever his intended effect was, it just makes Rogue feel sad again. She takes his face in both her hands, and the smirk fades from it as he looks at her.

“I didn't mean what I said earlier. I love you,” she whispers, afraid if she doesn’t tell him now, she might not get another chance to.

Gambit smiles, soft and easy. “Je t’aime aussi.”

Rogue pulls him down to kiss him then, sweet and tender, and he moves away after to kiss her cheeks again, repeating his words and adding a few je t’adores for good measure.

But he continues, kissing down her neck, and Rogue gasps as his new canines catch on her skin, needle-sharp, and Gambit laves over the spot with his roughened tongue.

Rogue tightens her fists into the fabric of the maid costume on his back, clutching him to her as he licks and kisses at her neck. She can feel the rumbling purr that's building in his chest and reverberating through her own.

Every lave of his tongue only stokes the fire that's been smoldering low in her belly all evening, and when he licks over a particularly sensitive spot, she arches against him with a sharp moan.

And they're pressed so close together that even through all the layers of his clothes she can feel that he's just as interested in the proceedings as she is.

She brings her hands up and buries them in his hair, curling her fingers into it, pulling at his cat ears, and when he makes a soft mewling sound against her throat in response to the attention, she imagines then what his bell would sound like, tinkling with his every–

And whatever resolve she had left about sticking to her earlier plan of just going to bed falls by the wayside.

“Take me, Remy,” Rogue gasps. “Take me, take me, take me…”

A simple enough request, she thinks, but Gambit suddenly yowls like somebody stepped on his tail, and he quickly rolls off her and onto his back, clutching at his head with his hands, his claws miraculously not scratching him somehow.

“Take it back, Rogue,” he pants. “Take it back!”

She jolts upright, worried and scared for him. “Okay, okay, don’t take me.”

He immediately relaxes, breathing hard as he tries to catch his breath.

“What the hell was all that about?” she asks, concerned still.

“That,” he gulps in a breath, “be what happens when I don't do what I'm told.”

Rogue frowns then as she realizes the implications. “Remy, you mean you don't want to…?” She gestures between them.

“Oui,” he sighs heavily.

Trying not to let the hurt show even as she feels tears sting in her eyes, she asks quietly, “...Why not?”

Gambit glances at her. “Ain't you, chère,” he says, sounding exhausted suddenly. “Ain’t me neither, which be the problem,” he adds in mild disgust.

“Sugar, what's wrong?” Rogue asks gently, feeling the first tendrils of terror unfurling in her chest as she wonders what's happened to him now.

He sits up and smooths his apron down over his lap. “You get a chance to look at Hank’s big book?”

“Not really, just that page with all the bones.”

“Well, I got a good look at it. Lotta big words and scary pictures. Worse than a house of horrors, you ask me.”

Rogue remembers then that he'd slammed it shut after something in there had spooked him bad.

“Sugar…” she starts, getting more worried by the second, “...what is it?”

Gambit smooths his apron out again, a nervous tic. “Had a lotta ‘fun feline facts’ in there. Not just that one about the backbones, but others, too.” He glances at Rogue before continuing, “You ever hear the one about how tomcats, uh, got barbs on they…” he trails off then, gesturing vaguely towards his lap, and Rogue's left to put the pieces together on her own.

It doesn't take her long. “You got barbs on your pecker?” she asks, her eyes going wide in shock.

He winces. “Oui.”

“...Can I see?”

“Non! Non.” Gambit chuckles awkwardly. “Ain't running a peep show. And it bad enough I gotta see it.”

“But I wanna see,” she says petulantly, and there's a terrible moment where they both realize that she could just order him to do it, and there wouldn't be a thing he could do to stop himself.

Gambit looks a little afraid, like he thinks she might actually do it. “Chère…”

“I ain't need to see it that bad. It's okay, Remy,” she assures him gently.

He lets out a breath she hadn't even realized he'd been holding. “Merci.”

They stare at each other for a long moment then, their earlier mood spoiled.

“Well, what do you want to do now?” Rogue asks eventually, at a loss.

“What you asking me for? You the one supposed to be giving orders,” Gambit answers, amused.

“Don't mean I can't ask for suggestions.”

He slowly licks his lips before smirking. “Seemed like you was into what I was doing earlier,” he says, and he gives Rogue a look like a cat that's ate the canary.

And she can't help the shiver that runs through her at the thought of that new tongue of his elsewhere on her body than just her face and neck.

But that's not what she needs right now.

She shakes her head. “No, that's all right, sugar. Maybe it's best we just got some sleep now.” She musters a weak smile. “We gotta work on breaking your curse again tomorrow, and we'll need all the rest we can get for that.”

Gambit smiles back. “D’accord,” he agrees, and Rogue wants to burst into tears.

Because they're not breaking his curse tomorrow.

But it's still nice to pretend.

Rogue gets her sleep gloves off her nightstand and pulls them on before lying down.

Gambit lies down, too, facing her but with space between their bodies.

And that just won't do.

Rogue puts her arm out to beckon to him. “C’mere, sugar.”

He scoots closer so that Rogue can take him into her arms, and Gambit wraps his around her in kind so that they're lying in a tight embrace.

He tangles their legs together, cat and woman intertwined, and lays his head against her chest. He sighs in contentment, a hitch in the middle of it as it threatens to spill into a purr.

Rogue pets over his hair with her gloved hand and tries to memorize the shape of him like this, the weight of him in her arms.

“You gon’ be here in the morning?” Gambit murmurs against her chest, sounding like he's already half-asleep.

Crap. She'd forgotten that she was supposed to be meeting the team again in the morning.

Well.

They'll just have to make do without her.

“Yeah,” she softly assures him. “I'll be here, Remy.”

“Bon. Hate waking up without you, chère.”

He falls asleep not long after that, Rogue can feel when his breathing evens out, and he makes a quiet little purring sound at the end of every exhale that makes her chest ache.

I'll still be here, she thinks.

But will you?