Quixotic

Quixotic Chapter Twenty Three (NC-17)

Disclaimers Apply

 

A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies, BUSIEST
WOMAN ALIVE ™, Prophetic Muse, Hamster Witch and Uberbeta…I have a spare Tim
running around here. Yours? InterNutter, TC, Maxwell Pink, and Dracena
are wonderful and fantabulous for archiving/hosting!!! ProPhile is still Smut Muse First Class and
gets and extra Salma Hayek in Dogma muse for his troubles… J Readers/Reviewers: The Killer Kitties ™ have finally stopped caroling… It worries me that they’re so quiet…

 

 

 

Jubilee
popped another Jolly Ranger in her mouth and squinted down the street. “I give up. Really this time.”

Remy sighed
and shook his head. “Lance an’ Todd
ain’t shown up, Amara run off…mebbe it my breath.”

She rolled
her eyes at this. “You’re a dork, but
you’re my dork.” She stretched on her
toes and came back down with a bounce.
“C’mon, Gumbo. My back’s killing
me an’ I have to pee. Let’s get home.”

Remy
frowned thoughtfully. “Mebbe you be
needin’…dunno…med’cin?”

“I need a
nap,” she said with emphasis. “I’m so
tired lately…” Standing aside so Remy
could unlock the car door, she added, “I’m kicking all their asses when we get
home, you know.”

“Chere, you
ain’t kickin’ nothin’ in yo’ condition.”

Jubilee
made a face at that, sliding into the car.
Remy’s weirder than usual lately… Wonder if he’s hitting the eggnog
early? She waited until they were
well under way before asking casually, “So, I was thinking…instead of going out
on some big date tomorrow night, why don’t we sneak off and get a hotel room
for the night?”

He shot her
a sideways glance as he turned off the main road and onto one of the winding
blacktops leading to the Institute.
“Pour quoi?”

“Because I
think it’d be nice to just be us instead of us-on-a-date,” she shrugged. “And I don’t feel like dressing up.”

“So you
rather jus’ not dress?”

She
giggled. “Exactly.” Stretching her legs again, she sighed. “I’ kno knotted up lately. I really need to start working out on the
beam again.”

“Um…dat a
good idea?”

“Why not?”
she asked with a frown. “I’ve done it
forever…why stop now?” She sighed again
as he knees popped. “I’m getting old
for gymnastics.”

Remy wisely
remained silent for the next several miles.
As they turned the final corner to the last street, he asked hesitantly,
“Mebbe it be a good ting if you give it up den?”

Several
expressions flew across Jubilee’s face, disbelief, anger and resignation being
the chief three. Finally, she said softly, “Don’t think I haven’t thought of
it. But I just couldn’t give it up,
even when I got really old, like forty…
I mean, I’ve been doing this since I was three. If I stopped just because my knees creak or
I don’t have a team to compete on anymore…it’d be like cutting off my arm.”

Remy nodded
once to show he had been listening, then fell silent again as they reached the
gates to the Institute. The quiet
threatened to stretch into the house before he spoke again. “Chere, I’m tinkin’ we need ta talk.”

“Oooookay…” As she unbuckled, she kissed him quickly on
the cheek. “But in a minute. I still need to pee!”

He was left
alone in the garage as she made a mad dash to the house. With a resigned groan, he let his head fall
against the steering wheel with a thud. Stupid stupid stupid!
Now she gonna tink somethin’ bad!

“Uh…you
okay in there?”

Remy rolled
his head to one side and opened one eye.
“’Allo…”

St John
raised a brow and smirked. “Troubles?”

“Somethin’
like dat,” Remy sighed, easing out of the car as St John scooted back.

“What is
it, if you don’t mind me asking?”

Remy sighed
and fished a cigarette out of his breast pocket, rolling it between his fingers
a moment before ruefully putting it away.
“Jubilee say she gonna kill me herself if I don’ quite dese.”

“So you’re
having a nic fit? That’s it?” St John
nodded sagely. “Bobby made me quit and
I thought I was gonna climb the walls before I got over the cravings!”

Remy smirked
faintly. “How old are you?”

“Er…”

Laughing
softly, he eased St John’s flustered denials of what he had just said. “It ain’t dat.”

St John let
out a relieved breath. The general
consensus amongst the residents was that Remy was cool and would never snitch,
but you never really could tell who had gone over to the Goody Goody side… “Then?”

Remy
thought furiously for a moment. There
was no way St John would ever be in a similar situation, but maybe he could
offer an unbiased view, one of a male not hardwired to panic at the words “girlfriend”
and “pregnant” in the same sentence. “If’n
I tell you somethin’ you gotta keep yo’ mouth shut, d’accord?”

“Okay…”

“Cause if
this get ‘round, I’m gonna know who said somethin’ an’ I’m gonna hafta hurt you
bad. Got it?” He took St John’s audible gulp for assent. “Jubilee pregnant an’ I’m wantin’ to
propose.”

There was a
heavy silence and then St John asked, “Propose what?”

“Marriage,
you twit.” Remy retrieved the cigarette
and lit it without thinking. Exhaling a lungful of smoke, he added, “I’m scared
shitless.”

St John
blinked several times in surprise. “Then
don’t do it!”

“Pardon?”

“Don’t
propose because you’re scared. Propose
because you love her and want to spend the rest of your life with her, you…you…man!”

“Is that an
insult?”

“At the
moment, yes!” St John rolled his
eyes. “I don’t get breeders[1]. You know what causes this! Why didn’t you take precautions?”

Remy
frowned. “We did!”

“Then how…”
He took a deep breath and let it out in a rush. “Okay. That’s not
important. Damn… Wow.
How’d she tell you?”

“She…er…she
didn’t.”

St John’s
expression grew skeptical. “Then how
the Hell did you find out?”

Sheepishly,
Remy explained the incident with the trash can in Jubilee’s room. “She don’t know I know.” He found himself spilling the story to St John,
how he had been hinting and watching…When he was done, he felt as if a weight
had been lifted of his chest. He
assayed a tight smile. “An’ dat’s all
she wrote…”

St John
looked less skeptical and more thoughtful at that. “First thing you gotta do is tell her you know. For God’s sake, don’t ambush her with a
proposal! She’s not even out of school
yet…”

“Seem ta be
workin’ for Scott an’ Jean…”

“Case by
case basis here,” St John sighed. “Jubilee would freak if you proposed. Absofreakinglutely panic.”

“Mais we in
love!”

“That ain’t
the point, man. She’s not ready.”

“How do you
know?”

“Look, you
can either trust me or see for yourself…which is less likely to get you a
pissed off girlfriend?”

“Right,” Remy
sighed. “Good point.”

St John
nodded firmly. “Now, if you’ll excuse
me, I have to go thank Bobby for not having a uterus.”

 

“Emma!”

“Ms. Frost,”
she said tersely. “I just posted your
bail so I am Ms. Frost to you!”

Todd made a
“meep”ing noise and half-hid behind Lance.
“Thank you?” he asked hesitantly.

“Indeed,”
she murmured, stepping aside to allow the sheriff to unlock the enclosure.

“Ms. Frost,”
Lance began, but was silence with a hard glare from his liberator.

Emma sailed
from the small jail that served Bayville and out into the much less stuffy
afternoon air, Lance and Todd trotting along behind like lost puppies. When they reached her large sedan, white just
like everything else she owned, she snapped, “I can only hope it was worth it,
you two. This is going to be hard work,
keeping this from Charles!”

Lance and Todd
exchanged hopeful glances. “You’re not
gonna tell Professor Xavier?” Lance asked with studied neutrality. “Cool.”

“It isn’t
because I like you,” she growled, opening the driver side door and leaving them
to scramble into the backseat as she started the engine. “It’s because he doesn’t need the stress.”

“Hey, take
it where you find it,” Todd muttered.

Lance asked
suddenly, “Have you heard from Amara at all?
Today, I mean…”

Emma
glanced in the rearview mirror as she swung onto Main Street. “No.
Why?”

“We were
looking for her…” He explained as best
he could about the morning’s plan, then added, “I was hoping she went back home
or something.”

“Not while
I was there,” Emma allowed, feeling slightly sorry for the boys. “Who did you hit?”

Todd
smirked, splitting the cut on his lip a little wider. “Pietro and Piotr.”
Emma blinked. “Piotr…he’s the metal one, yes?”
“Yeah,” Lance sighed. “And Pietro is the fast one.”

Emma made a
“hmmm”ing noise and glanced back at them again. “I hope you hit them hard.”

Todd
laughed outright. “You sound like Rogue,
yo.”

“Speaking
of Rogue,” she said smoothly, “she was looking for you. I ran into her as I left. She seemed very upset about something… Do
you know anything about a Rebecca Tolensky?”

Todd’s eyes
went wide. “Huh?”

Emma’s own
gaze grew shuttered. “You’d best ask
her yourself,” she murmured.

Lance
slumped low in his seat, frowning. He
barely noticed Todd’s spurt of energy as the long-limbed youth fidgeted beside
him. All he could think about was
Amara, possibly lying dead in a ditch or worse. “Ms. Frost…could we please just drive around town once? I can’t just leave her out here…”

Emma hid
her grin well. “She’s not a helpless
twit, you know. She probably just went home…”

Lance
growled. “Everyone keeps saying that!”

She raised
a light brow at his outburst. “Because
it’s most likely true…” She sighed in
annoyance as the tinny sound of Bach’s Toccata Fughes in D Minor sounded from
her purse. “Who the Hell… Hello? Sean…”
Her voice became a distinct purr.
“Mmmhmmm…. Mmmhmmm. Really? Well. That’s not very good is it? I see.
I have Lance and Todd with me…What do you mean no cards? Okay, I’ll meet you there.” She snapped the
phone shut with a grunt of irritation. “We’re
taking the long way home. I need to go
to Bayville General and give Banshee my copy of the insurance cards.”

“What’d he
do?” Lance asked sullenly, elbowing Todd as the fidgeting finally got annoying.

“Hey! That’s my rib, yo!”

“HE,” Emma spoke
above the incipient sniping, “did nothing.
Your girlfriend, however, apparently took a spill. Oh, don’t look so tragic. She’ll be fine!”

 

A/N And who IS Rebecca Tolensky anyway? Kurtty-ness next chapter.



[1] Sometimes
offensive term to refer to heterosexuals and sometimes bisexuals in a het
relationship.