18/Speed Dial

Speed Dial
Date of Scene:	18 February 2020
Location:	Apple Park - Salem Center
Synopsis:	A Cajun and a Belle meet again. Brainwashing ensues.
Cast of Characters:	Remy LeBeau, Rogue

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Remy LeBeau has posed:
Remy had been in the middle of a hot hand when his phone had beeped. It's not the only phone on his person, but he knows what each is for and a little smirk quirks the corner of his mouth. He holds up a finger as one of the other fellows at the table lays out his hand, shushing him as he reads the message on the screen. After a moment he lays his cards down on the table, visible to all.

"I beat you, cher," he says, typing a response with one hand and not lifting his eyes from the screen, "Pay de man."

Later, the sort of convertible one might expect from a middle-aged man with a managerial salary and a mid-life crisis rolls to a stop on the street outside Apple Park. Upstate New York wasn't his sort of place, but he'd gone further for less. He climbs over the door without opening, a slick motion that trails his coat out behind him.

He sends another message, letting the recipient on the other end know that he's arrived, and then tucks the phone away. A moment later he plucks out a crumpled packet of Marlboro's and draws a cigarette out with only his mouth, clasping it loosely between his teeth. A match is struck off the nearby gatepost, ignites the end of the smoke, and is then tossed away to smolder and die.

He waits.

Rogue has posed:
Rogue had gotten the text messages and she'd responded in kind. Quite honestly the messages had mad her sit up right in the rec room at Xavier's and get up, push past the other students there and slip out into the hallway to read them. A smile on her face she'd moved to get her coat after telling him she'd grab a ride to get into Salem Center.

It only took a few minutes, there was an Uber just down the street and they swung past Xavier's to pick her up.

So when she arrives at the Park, she steps out of the car and closes the door, thanking the man inside it after having a nice but short conversation with him and then she's... here, her hands going into her Peacoat's pockets. Anna-Marie starts to walk through the park with her green eyes going left and right, a dark red wool cap on her head, holding her white and dark brown hair down around her face and head.

She strolls through the park, slipping past two people and smiling at their matching lab doggies on a leash. But, she's soon to searching again for the man who'd asked her to come here.

Remy LeBeau has posed:
"She follow her heart af'er all," Remy calls as he watches Anna-Marie wander past, leaning against the gate post as though he'd been there all night and she just happened to wander by, "Voleur de Coeur. Ça va, mon catin? "

All of it is spoken as the cigarette hangs lazily between his lips, casting his features with an orange-red glow in the dim light. The pale smoke curls in tendrils up and away into the frigid air, and he tilts the sunglasses down his nose a little to look at her over them. Plucking the cigarette from between his lips with a gloved hand, he pushes off the post and struts lazily across the grass towards her.

"I di'n't interrupt anything? You run off to go veiller with all your frien', I t'ink I ne'er gonna get that call."

Rogue has posed:
Rogue grins at the 'Heart thief' line when she hears it and stops to see him. She watches him take a drag on that cigarette and then just takes a couple simple little steps toward him before she stops. "I haven't stole nothin' and you can't prove otherwise." She says in that southern honeyed voice of hers. Her eyes glance left and right, then back to him.

When he moves she moves to stay fairly close to him. "I wasn't /not/ gonna call ya back, dummy. You were the only thing about that night that was any damn fun. Those idiots I was with? They got picked up by the cops before I even got to them. I had t'go to the precinct pick-up... cop'n'box thing to get'em." She huffs out a heavy exhale.

"As for right now?" She grins. "I'm just glad t'get outta this place I'm livin' at now. Its a weird boardin' school. Kinda cult-like. But, I mean, its better than where I was a month ago."

Remy LeBeau has posed:
"The police? You got some trouble friends, catin," Remy says, clicking his tongue and shaking his head with mock disappointment, "Maybe I shouldn't've answer your call - you sound like trouble, too."

As he steps up alongside her, the Cajun disregards personal space entirely and his upper arm brushes against her own. He reaches into his jacket to produce his packet of cigarettes, opening the top and holding it out so she can fish one from the about half-a-pack remaining inside.

"But, maybe I jus' drawn to trouble, hein? Can' help myself."

The talk of the school makes him raise his eyebrows skeptically, jutting out his lower lip: "You getting' brainwashed, cher?"

Rogue has posed:
Rogue grins when he collides shoulders with her and he might or might not notice that she's extremely sturdy and doesn't budge a millimeter since he caught her sort've off guard and she didn't have a chance to feign girlish frailty like one might due in a normal situation. She looks back at him, up at his eyes, then down at the cigarettes he's offering and she grins. She raises a gloved hand up then and dips her middle fingers inside, then plucks one out with them all nimble-like.

His words truly do make her smile and then exhale a quick laugh that shoots a cloud of hot exhaled breath out from between her lips in the dying light of the day. "Brain washed... thats a." She glances back at him as she raises the cigarette up to her red painted lips and places it between them. "Thats a funny way t'phrase it. Cause its one hundred percent right." She says through the smoke.

She assume he's gonna light it for her so she glances down at his hands to see if he's got a lighter out.

She really did come to Xavier's, or stayed with them, for a 'brain washing' which is pretty ironic. Her mind was pretty cluttered when she and Logan got to Xavier's. All the stolen thoughts of everyone she'd touched in the past 4 years of her life clouding it up. Jean and Charles had to help sort those thoughts out.

Remy LeBeau has posed:
Remy produces a match from between his fingers, the stick just appearing there as though conjured into existence by the Cajun. Once he has it, he strikes it against the gate post. The match hisses to life and flickers a cozy glow against both of them as he leans in close, too close, to her face. Not touching her, but certainly well within her personal space. The cigarette lit, he glances up to meet her eyes over the top of his sunglasses.

"Laissez les bon temps rouler," he whispers low enough for only her to her, before tossing the match away and letting it smolder away into nothing.

He doesn't leave her personal space once the cigarette is lit, drawing his own from between his lips and letting tendrils of smoke creep up into the frigid evening air.

"I'm known t' be a hun'erd percent right, sometimes. Like I look at you, catin, an' I say - dere a girl I want t' know. An' I was right."

Rogue has posed:
Admittedly, Rogue is pretty susceptible to having the man up close to her like that. Internally its exciting and though she knows its wrong and she should shove him away before its 'too late' she can't stop herself, her... desire to be close to someone is too great and she feels a wanton magnetic pull between the two of them that makes her want to be ... even closer. Sure he's hot. But he's also charming in a way that strikes a chord with her. But she plays the game.

"Oh stop it." She says in a teasing response after he lights her cigarette and she takes a puff from it before blowing the smoke off to the side in the cold winter wind. She looks back to him and takes a step forward so that her knee is beside his, inner knee to inner knee, she rocks forward a little so that their inner thighs are touching. "Good times better keep rollin', far as I'm concerned, Cajun." She says back to him with a little smile on her lips. Another take from the cigarette is had and she glances away...

When she looks back this time she has a bit more of a serious expression on her face and her free hand moves her white hair out from in front of that perfectly smooth and naturally attractive face of hers. "I got somethin' I gotta tell ya though." She starts. "Cause, cause I think I wanna... kiss ya. But I gotta tell ya that I can't." She's nervous at this point, thats clear, she shakes her head to try to put something between those words and her next.

"I can't touch anybody. I'll... I'll kill'em if I do." She looks at his eyes, expecting to watch him recoil. "I'm a mutant, thats my mutation. I can't touch people's skin against my own." Its a bombshell. To her anyway.

Remy LeBeau has posed:
Remy draws back a little when Rogue turns to him with that serious expression, as though wary of suddenly being slapped. He doesn't move away though, the lower half of him maintaining that close proximity even while he tilts a few inches back at the shoulders. He lifts the cigarette up to plant it between her lips, the orange-lit end tilting upwards in an almost comical way as he listens to her.

"What you do, mon catin?" he asks, making a show of lowering his glasses and trailing his eyes over her from her forehead all the way down to her shoes, "Vous brûlez?"

He lifts a hand up, stretching it out and pressing his fingertip against the shoulder of her coat. He draws it away quickly, as though burnt, and waves it dramatically in the air. He's still smiling as he draws the cigarette from his mouth, holding it between his fingers.

"You know, mutant ain't such a big deal. Plenty a mutants 'round. Some've my best friends're mutants. In fact, let Remy tell you a l'il secret."

He says nothing, instead holding the cigarette up between them. After a moment, it begins to glow. Softly at first and then violently, glowing violet and then so intensely that the sight of it is lost in the bright whiteness of the light. After a second he flicks it away towards the grass, where it pops loudly like a firecracker. He laughs.

"You can't kiss me, I just kiss you," he tells her, reaching to take her gloved hand and drawing it up to his lips to press them gently against her knuckles. After a second he pulls back, still chuckling, "Regarde moi! Je suis chevalier!"

Rogue has posed:
She'd watched his mocking burnt touch to her shoulder and she'd grinned, but asa Rogue starts her reply her head starts to shake side to side while a dramatic tone of voice comes from between her lips. "Regardez-vous, Sir Knight. Beau et charmant. L?ensemble du paquet." She tells him, her French washing away that southern accent and replacing it with a flawless tone that might suggest she grew up in the heart of Paris... or maybe Montreal.

She starts to smile a moment after she says that though and she watches him kiss her gloved hand. She's trying to stay aloof, to stay 'cool' to be as 'cool' as he seems to her, but its challenging. Because he's quickly melting her heart like a ice cube under the summer sun.

"I thought you might be... mutant as well." She then says, staring at his shade covered eyes. "Because of your, mysterious stare." A slight grin shows upon her lips then. "You could come t'where I am now. Maybe they'd take ya like they have me, you could be there with us." She'd seen that trick with the firecracker cigarette. Her eyes had looked at it, then back to his gaze. "They could use someone with that kinda power, I think..." And truth be told she just wants him around her.

Remy LeBeau has posed:
"You t'ink so?" Remy asks her, the grin fading from his features to be replaced with a more solemn expression on his face, "I'm honest, I never been nowhere before."

A look of discomfort suddenly washes over him, and though he doesn't draw away from her he does tug on the collars of his long coat and draw it a little tighter around himself. As though the chill had suddenly got to him, and he were only just now feeling it. He reaches up to push his glasses up his nose, that black-red eyes suddenly hidden again behind darkened glass.

"I - I t'ink about it, cher, hop. Not much for brain washin'. Not much for standin' still."

Then, the charm wells back up within him and he's smiling that same devilish smile once more. He moves to step alongside her, his hand reaching down to splay against the small of her back and his head tilting to face her.

"How 'bout we go find trouble. Talk about your cult later, non?"

Rogue has posed:
Rogue isn't effected by the cold in quite the same way that others are, but she does still dislike it and how it does feel none the less. So when she sees him pull his coat closed a bit more she looks /him/ up and down and grins up at him. "I wouldn't let them brain wash ya, I promise." She says in an overly flirtatious sort've way. "I'll protect ya." She adds with a sly grin growing on her lips. She glances away though toward the city of Salem outside of the park and she nods toward it.

"Wanna go see a movie or somethin' then?" She asks him. "Maybe find a place t'eat that isn't some kinda trash fast food?" She turns then to walk with him, assuming he'll go with her. "Not sure how much 'trouble' either'a those things would be, but its better than freezin' our parts off out here, I'd wager." His Cajun accent to her Mississippi Belle, she moves to bump shoulders with him and to take another draw on the cigarette he'd lit for her. "If nothin' else, I'd like ya t'come and see the place so you can give me your opinion on it. I'm still tryin' t'decide if I should uproot and get the hell outta there myself."

As they walk, she keeps looking over and up at him, smiling at him.

Remy LeBeau has posed:
"Yeah," Remy nods his head in agreement, slipping up alongside her as they walk, "I like movies. I like dose ones with de char an' de increasingly outlandish situations. Rapide et furieux. An' Wrath a' Khan, of course. Un classique."

As they walk, he doesn't keep his distance. Her warning about how dangerous she is to touch seems to have been heard, but not deterred him. He snakes his arm carefully through hers, letting it wrap around the crook of his elbow as though this were a hundred years earlier and they were strolling down the boardwalk.

"You convince me," he tells her, nodding his head, "I come see dis place a' yours. Give it de Cajun seal of approval."

As they walk towards the sparse lights of Salem, he throws back his head and calls out loudly enough to echo off the nearby houses and wake the early risers.

"Je pense que c'est le début d'une belle amitié!"