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Five minutes. Forty-six seconds.
The old warehouse burns, near incandescent fire feeding on a century of oil spills and abandoned crates and the chemical agents of a mutant villain's mind control spray.
Wolverine had not come out with the others.
Six minutes. One second.
Fire trucks, firefighters, all stand idle. The building is isolated in a desert of cracked asphalt, well quarantined from its neighbors. They remain only to contain any fire that breaks loose.
Gambit haunts the far corner of the parking lot, back far enough from the fire that no one tries to haul him to safety, and watches where the fire is the least furious.
Wolverine had stayed behind, drawn into the building deeper and deeper, on the heels of the mutant calling himself Hellfire, drawn into the chase like he was on a string.
Gambit had seen the henchman heading for the chemical crates. Could not reach him. Had sounded the general warning over the comms and beat it out of there, after seeing the rest get out.
Wolverine had not shown at the rally point.
Six minutes. Nineteen seconds.
Gambit waits and listens to the pocket watch count down Wolverine's chances.
Movement at a second story window.
Six minutes and thirty-two seconds.
A dark figure struggles with the window. The panes are small, the frame iron.
The entire panel of glass explodes outward.
Wolverine drops to the ground.
Staggers to his feet and runs, one leg awkward.
Gambit sprints toward him.
Wolverine grabs at his arm. Gambit grabs onto his shoulders.
The big man is in one piece, but his leather jacket is gone, his leather pants torn and ripped. The white tee shirt he wears underneath sports soot smears and tiny burned holes, black around the edges.
He smells like chemical smoke.
Gambit kisses him.
Wolverine hesitates, caught off guard. They don't do this in public.
Gambit digs fingers into his shoulders and demands a response.
Hesitation evaporates. Wolverine crushes him close. The kiss is fierce and possessive.
Dimly Gambit wonders if he should be feeling joy, happiness - but what he feels on seeing his nearly indestructible lover emerge alive from that inferno is so far beyond a label that he will never be able to name it.
They break apart.
"I'm fine," Wolverine says. "I'm fine." He slides a lock of Gambit's hair between his fingers, a gesture he can rarely when Gambit is within touching distance.
"I can see that," Gambit says.
What they don't say: no one has any idea how much punishment Wolverine's healing factor can deal with. A fire burning long enough to skeletonize a normal human body might not leave enough tissue outside the adamantium jacketing Wolverine's bones to regenerate the man.
Gambit fears this during the nights that he cannot sleep.
"Where's our ride?" Wolverine asks
"Sent them back. Storm got a broken arm, and Kitty and Bobby had some burns. Nothing serious." Gambit had not wanted company for his vigil.
Less than seven minutes, and his heart is still pounding.
Wolverine rests his knuckles over that overworked organ, warm and solid through Gambit's thin tee shirt. Undoubtedly, he can hear it racing.
"Maybe we should go somewhere," Wolverine says,
"Yeah. C'mon." Gambit steps away from Wolverine, tries to get his breathing, his heart back to normal. Tries to will the tremor from his hands. He tells himself it's from adrenaline. He knows better. It's from averted grief.
Or perhaps it's from need. Desire rises in him, desire to confirm life, to prove that they have beaten death once again.
These streets around here, they're deserted. No one lives in this part of town. No one spends any more time here than they have to.
Gambit never got a chance to scout the place, but his instincts tell him where to go. Not the darkest streets, where the least of the city, with no more to lose, might lurk, nor the brightest, where civilization still holds sway.
He finds a block where a few lights are out, where grass grows up around doors and distances between buildings proffer few hiding places. Wolverine has his hand on Gambit's back, right between his shoulder blades where he feels most vulnerable, where Gambit can rarely tolerate touch - except from Wolverine, except in passion.
The big man broadcasts presence, and Gambit rises to the bait as always. His scent, sweat and forest and metal, teases him. The weight of his hand, and the loom of his developed frame shake Gambit's concentration.
Gambit lights on the nearest option: a garage, litter in the doorways, no security, some space around it for parking, and angles towards the back.
A chain link fence circles the back lot, some panels woven with plastic, some open. An old Dodge Charger, paint faded like it‘s been sitting in the sun for years, sits lonely in front of a work bay.
Wolverine pushes Gambit against the car, pinning him forward with his weight. His teeth bite into the back of Gambit's neck,. Gambit ducks his head, exposes his neck to Wolverine's teeth. Wolverine's cock hardens against his ass. Wolverine's hands find Gambit's sensitive stomach. His mouth moves to that spot under his ear, alive to the lightest touch of a lover, and Gambit gasps.
Wolverine yanks Gambit's jacket off, shoves the tee-shirt over his head, and rubs a bristled jaw between his shoulder blades.
Gambit curses. His braced arms shake as he holds himself in place. Wolverine licks a long wet stripe up his spine, and Gambit feels himself going to bits, mentally, emotionally, fear and joy and desire and relief whip-cracking through him.
He pushes back, and Wolverine gives him six inches, more as Gambit turns around. Gambit yanks Wolverine's belt loose, his pants open, gets a handful of his lifting cock. "Turn around and lean against the car," Gambit says,
Wolverine edges around and arranges himself against the trunk of the Charger, a big cat waiting for his prey. Gambit goes to his knees, nuzzles Wolverine's cock, warm and moving and alive, mouths the head, curls his tongue around the shaft, then flicks his tongue away. Repeats his investigation, twice, four times,
Wolverine's cock firms to bursting, jerks and sways as Wolverine struggles to be still and let himself be loved. The old man has a hell of a lot of stamina, but he won't last that long this keyed up, and Gambit stands, sure to trail his hair over the eager organ.
Wolverine curses.
"Turn around," Gambit says. He takes his own cock from his uniform pants, waiting.
With unusual grace for such a big man, Wolverine turns around, leans over the car, and places his hands on the hood.
Gambit works his hands into Wolverine's pants at his hips, and slides the tight leather down to his knees, leaving Wolverine bare-assed in a not very private place in a dangerous part of town.
Wolverine growls, that encouraging noise which tells Gambit he's hit the right button. Gambit works him open, patient only because of the tease factor, painfully hard himself and needing his man more than ever.
Carefully, mindfully, Gambit works his cock into Wolverine's ass, tiny increments of fulfillment wearing at his self control.
He's not an animal. He's not cruel. But he'd be slamming Wolverine hard if this wasn't Wolverine's preference, slow and deliberate and time-taking.
Gambit rocks forward into Wolverine to a soundtrack of encouraging grunts. He can't quite reach Wolverine's cock from here, with the car in the way. Hands that have mapped this body, always perfect, always whole, find Wolverine’s other pleasure spots: the small of his back; his hip bones, where Gambit rubs but never grips; his nipples, pressed flat under Gambit’s fingertips; his collarbone, scratched with a ragged fingernail.
Slow, so slow, this build of pleasure, the harshening of his lover’s respirations. Gambit feels himself in a trance, the pursuit one of connection rather than climax.
He almost misses it when Wolverine urges him on. “Faster,” Wolverine rasps. “Harder. You want to.”
“That what you want?” Gambit licks Wolverine’s shoulder blade, tasting him, holding still inside his lover.
“Yes.”
“What?”
“Yes. Please,” Wolverine rasps.
Gambit retreats, then pushes back faster. Again pulls back, and returns faster still. He reaches full-out rough thrust on the third return, a cracked sob marking the gratification radiating from that so important piece of flesh.
Wolverine pushes back to meet Gambit, shifts his weight to one arm and reaches down to handle his own cock.
The play of the muscles in Wolverine’s shoulder, his arm, his back as he jacks himself switches the intense sensations flooding Gambit into over-drive. His palms on Wolverine’s hips give way to fingers grabbing hard, he can’t thrust fast enough, and he comes when he’s barely halfway inside Wolverine, a surprised pleasure burning through him. Gambit sways, wills his knees to stand firm.
Wolverine bites off a growl, and Gambit feels his lover’s hips jerk through his own orgasm.
Gambit braces himself on the car with one hand, and withdraws entirely from his lover. Now he wants to sleep for a week. Or maybe ten days. Wolverine shifts under him, and Gambit finds himself after a confused second sitting on the Charger’s trunk and leaning against his man.
“Now what?” Wolverine asks.
“Mmm. Think this car runs?”
“You want to steal the car we just fucked on?” Wolverine is amused. And he sounds just as exhausted as Gambit.
“Pretty sure you came all over it. I’d say that marks it as yours.” Gambit puts his head on Wolverine’s shoulder and shuts his eyes.
The laugh from Wolverine is deep, joyous.
Gambit smiles to himself. He’s had terrible days. He’s had good days. Where this one falls, he can’t say. That laugh, though, he’ll remember that.
“Let me check under the hood,” Wolverine says. “Damn thing was abandoned for a reason, I bet.”
Gambit shakes his head, runs his hands through his hair. This is normal. This is their life: working on cars and making jokes and fucking and stealing things.
The stopwatch ticks away in his pocket. It’s just forty-eight minutes since Wolverine got trapped in that burning building. Forty-one since he escaped.
Gambit’s not going to believe this is over, isn’t going to feel settled, for days.
Going to have to make sure to test the old man’s ‘alive’ status at all possible opportunities.
Wonder of wonders, the Charger fires up when Gambit hotwires it.
Takes two days to reach the mansion. Ordinarily, eleven hours of straight driving would have done the trick.
When you stop every two hours to fuck, it‘s tough to make good time.