Galatea

Galatea Chapter Thirty Six (NC-17)
Disclaimers Apply

A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies, BUSIEST WOMAN ALIVE (tm), Prophetic Muse, Hamster Witch and Uberbeta...Now Asmodeus wants to have a kilt. *sigh * InterNutter, TC, Maxwell Pink and Dracena get musehugs for archving/hosting. ProPhile is an amusing smutmuse. ;) And Michael (that one, over there) is most interesting... Readers/Reviewers: *glomps Morgan * And duck kisses for all of you! I don't celebrate this most vile of days, but Happy Valentines to those who do!

Remy blinked and bit the inside of his cheeks to keep from laughing. Jubilee had such a determined look on her face as she set the table that he almost hated to tell her Belladonna left late in the night for her rendez vous with a representative from the Paris Guild. Instead, he leaned against the doorframe and watched as she counted forks and knives, rearranged napkins and tripped over her own feet trying to get to the oven. She wore heels that must have come from Kitty-they were a size too large and a shade too narrow-and clothes she wore like a costume, not quite comfortable in the neatly pressed skirt and too-bright sweater. "Chere," he said in a conversational tone, making her squeak in surprise and nearly drop a casserole dish, "where yo' gum?"
She flushed and tried to look nonchalant. "In a drawer in my desk. Why?"
"Jus' not used ta seein' ya without it is all," he shrugged, coming into the kitchen. "What you makin'?"
"Lunch, like I said...Where's Belle?"
"Ah, she had ta go early on... She say au revoir."
"Oh." She felt absurdly disappointed.
Remy smirked. "If it make ya feel better, she gonna come back by on her way home in a day or so..."
"Ah, well. Lovely."
He moved around the table to hold her chair out for her. She stared for a moment, then shook her self and sat down, muttering "thanks." "So," he said after an awkward pause, "I been getting' the feelin' you mad at me."
"I'm not mad at you," she said sweetly, pouring herself a glass of tea from the pitcher on the table. "I'm just...changing."
"Into what?"
She ignored the comment and proceeded to serve them both out of the casserole dish. "I was thinking maybe we could go to the museum tomorrow after I get out of class."
"I thought de museum make you nervous," he said dryly. "Didn' you call it too much temptation pour un voleur?"1
"I was being sarcastic," she said through gritted teeth.
"Jubilation," he said casually, picking at the unidentifiable glob on his plate. "Why you all dress up like dat?"
"I don't know what you mean."
"Where your t-shirts an' jacket an' jeans?"
"In my et. et. In the back." She sniffed in a mockery of haughtiness and added, "I think I need to grow up and I'm starting today."
"You need to... Quoi?" He groaned in sudden realization. "Jubilee, this cause o' Belladonna?"
"Why," she bit out, "does everything I do make you think of Belladonna? I change my hair, you assume it's because of her, I dress nice, you think it's because of her..." She stifled the rest of her outburst and raked her fingers through her hair. "I'm sorry. Rice?"
He eyed the proffered dish and shook his head to the negative. "Look, I know mebbe I sometime act like you a kid, mais..."
She stood and picked up the tray of rice. "Remy, if you don't stop talking right now, I'm going to do something very bad to my mother's rice recipe."
"Chere, you gotta listen here..."
"Remy." She looked sadly at the rice. "Please don't make me do this."
say say you wanna act grown up? Dumping rice on my head ain't grown up," he retorted, standing. "Bein' adult is listenin' instead o' throwin' a fit!" He reached across the table and took the tray out of her hands before moving around to stand between her and the door. "Now I'm only gonna say dis once. If you ever change one ting 'bout yo'self cause you be tinkin' I want dat, I ain't ever gonna forgive you."
She stared, agape. "Remy Etienne LeBeau..."
"Promise me."
"Promise you what?"
"You ain't gonna change cause o' me."
"I already have," she retorted.
"Nothin' you can't fix..."
"Remy, people change all the time. We have to. And we change because of someone, not always for 'em though. I've changed because of you and you've changed because of me."
"Peut'etre mais you actin' a damned fool, you know dat?" He grabbed her about the waist and lifted her to sit on the counter, bringing her to eye level with him. "Jus' cause you dress like dat don' make you more mature."
"I'm not acting like a fool," she snarled, finding herself effectively trapped. "I'm just..." She closed her eyes and counted to ten, knowing someone must have heard her raised voice. "Remy," she said with a note of conviction in her voice, "I have a Danger Room session in ten minutes, but I want you to think about something until later tonight, okay?"
"What's that, chere?" he sighed.
She took his hand and guided it up her thigh, under her skirt. "Not all changes are visible, you know." She parted her legs a little further and pressed his fingers against her piercing. It took a moment to register but when it did, she had the satisfaction of seeing Remy well and truly startled. Jubilee took the opportunity to slide down off the counter and wriggle free from his grasp. "If you want to talk more about it, I'll be in my room around eleven."
Kurt turned sideways to avoid running into Jubilee as she skipped from the room. "What's gotten into her?"
"Felt like 'bout twennysix gauge2," he muttered.
"Was? Ooooh...macaroni!" Kurt took up Jubilee's untouched plate and dugwithwith a fervor born of a hyper metabolism.
"Nothin'. You get anywhere avec Kitty?"
"Well...I'm not sure. I'm hiding from Logan at the moment." Around a mouthful of noodles, he told Remy about the closet incident. "I don't get it, you know? Why wouldn't she want me to?"
"Mebbe," Remy said slowly, the wheels turning in his mind, "she wanted to do somethin' for you instead..." He looked at the remains of lunch on the table and glanced in the direction in which Jubilee had vanished. "Je pense...je pense que j'ai un ide..."
"About what?"
"At leas' bout Jubilee...You gonna talk to Kitty?"
"I don't know. She's sort of hiding herself. She called Piotr and Piotr wants to talk to me about dating my sister now." He sighed and took the plate to the sink. "I want to be mad at her..."
"Mais?"
"I can see why she did it... She just wants me and my sisters to be happy with each other, but..." He frowned at his own words of a few days before. "I think I might have said something that's making her act..."
"Twitchy?"
"Ja, twitchy."
"I don't know what to tell ya, homme." Remy shoved away from the counter and shrugged.
_*Remy, Kurt, please come to the boathouse immediately, _* Professor Xavier ordered.
"What did we do?" Kurt groaned.


A/N I know the last two chapters have been kind of slut tut the minor crisis has passed so quicker paced chapter should be up starting w/37. Next up, Kitty/Kurt, Emma/Sean then Sam/Theresa, Rahne/Jamie, then Rogue/Todd, Lance/Amara, then a bit of Storm and Logan, Remy/Jubes and some Kurtty to round things out.
1 For a thief.
2 The larger the number, the smaller the piercing.