Archive of Our Own ^beta

They don't know quite what they want to be. The two men circle each other cautiously, warily.

There's a straightness to the way that Scott Summers stands that has nothing to do with being a stickler for posture and everything to do with being confident and never backing down from what he feels is right. There's an insolence to Remy LeBeau's perpetual slouch that whispers of shady things always going on under the surface, just out of sight. Don't look too close, but if you do, don't expect to see anything more than illusion.

Their features are similar enough, and Scott knew enough about his missing little brother to match up the details of birthmarks and an old babyhood scar to know this isn't a joke and it's not a scam, no matter how good this LeBeau person may be at running one. It's real. This used to be a Summers and now he's lived his entire life in Louisiana with the first family willing to take in a visible mutant.

"How did you find me again?" Scott asks, eyeing his brother suspiciously through shades of red.

Remy scratches his chin, smile something sly and smug. "The X-Men ain't that subtle, Boy Scout."

Scott frowns. This is his brother, long lost, thought dead, and every bone in his body says not to trust the smoke and mirrors. "It's Scott."

The half smile stretches out across Remy's entire face. "Nice to meet you too, mon ami."

They aren't enemies. They aren't friends. They definitely aren't the brothers Scott still remembers back in the haze of the distant past. (He was far too young to make out any details thinking back now.)

Scott is solid edges and hard-won leadership. He's responsible and has too many kids (the entire class of whoever never made it out of the school after enrollment) and even Jean sometimes teases him that he's a stickler.

Remy blurs into shadows from physical and telepathic eye alike. His tongue is barbed and he disappears at odd hours during the night and Scott doesn't think he's the kind of man you can rely on. But he's blood, he's family.

They don't know quite what to be.

"Moonshine?" Remy offers, tipping the bottle toward Scott's gesture of friendship—stepping out onto the porch beside him to moonwatch or whatever it is Remy does out here besides smoke.

Scott declines. He has a feeling he should keep a clear head around his brother.

"You ticked off Rogue again," Scott opens with. Not the best of conversation starters as they go, and Jean isn't shy at telling him so as she passes through his mind on the way to a to-do list he never got around to writing down for her.

Remy's mouth just tips upward in that sly half-smile before he puts the bottle to his lips again. "You don't say?"

Scott snorts. "The best way to get a girl to like you isn't to tug on her braids, Gambit."

Remy laughs brazenly, openly at that. "Have you tried it?"

Scott hasn't.

Remy is a preternaturally good cook. "Practice, mon ami. It's all practice." He makes coffee and sour faces in the morning and mutters far worse imprecations than "stickler" about Scott's rigidly enforced training schedule.

"Y' Jean-Luc come back out o' his grave to drive moi to insanity," he grumbles at last.

Scott does a double-take. "Who?"

Remy goes tight-lipped and hard-eyed. He downs the rest of his coffee and curses in French.

They're awkward. They adhere to different rules. They don't see eye to eye and Scott hates this feeling that here's his brother and they aren't brothers.

"You live here, then you have to follow the rules, Gambit!"

Remy stares at him intently for long minutes. He's leaning back in his chair at the kitchen table, and Jean is holding her breath behind Scott in the tense silence stretching between them.

"Is dat what y' want from dis one?" Remy asks suddenly, voice thick with Cajun patois. It fades to nothingness most times, and this, Scott doesn't know what to make of this.

He sighs and scrubs his face over his hands. "I want you to try."

Remy's mouth is grim. He salutes Scott with his coffee mug. There's nothing reassuring about the gesture.

"He's just like you," Jean tells him, then huffs at his disbelief. "He is. He's just… testing boundaries."

Scott turns his head on the pillow and studies the way the darker red of her hair falls against her pale pink cheek.

"You're his family now, and he's trying to make himself fit."

Or make Scott fit. He grimaces. "Can't he do a little less inspiring our kids to unholy behavior?"

She pulls the pillow from under his head and swings it at him.

"Jean!"

"They're teenagers. They're supposed to be holy terrors."

It's daylight. Scott has a feeling Remy slept 'til noon, though there's a slim chance he was out and about and pulling some hijinks instead.

"Afternoon," he greets as he goes for the coffee.

Remy's standing at the kitchen window. He turns his head toward Scott and simply nods. He's in the full regalia, trench coat, bo staff under his coat—

Scott takes another look and stops. "Going somewhere?"

Remy shrugs. "Just for an outing. Want to come?"

Scott has plenty else to do, but like Jean said, he's family and they have to make this work sometime. "Sure."

"Do you remember—"

First question out the gate and Remy shakes his head before Scott gets it out.

"Don't remember anything."

Scott mulls that over and asks, "How did you find me?"

Remy sighs. "Trust me, mon frère. You don't want to know."

Scott raises his eyebrows. Brother. He'd called him brother.

"Whatever you say, Remy," he returns the favor.