Title: Interlude

Author: Raietta ([email protected] or [email protected])

Website: www.angelfire.com/rant/raietta/index.html

Rating:

Pairing / Main characters: Gambit/Daredevil

Series/Sequel: unfinished, There is a companion piece to this: The Shark on the Beach

Summary: X-Men/Daredevil Crossover, SLASH

Disclaimer: The poem used in this story is a large fragment of James Wright's "A Prayer in My Sickness," found in the collection "Saint Judas.". Rest is Marvels.

Archive/Distribution: Sure! Just tell me where.

Notes: This story is the first I wrote about DD and Gambit being an item, but it takes place in the middle of the relationship, without showing how Daredevil and Gambit got together in the first place. That story will be finished some day soon, but not this very moment. Right now, just be aware that Remy and Matt are a couple, now.

DEDICATION: To the lovely and uber-talented Rebop, whose inspiration and wonderful cheerleading for my writing has done more for me and my fic than can possibly be believed. Here�s to you, kid (this is me being Bogart, pay me no heed), and I�m hoping I�ll be seeing more of your beautiful Remy/Jono stories soon, soon, soon...

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Interlude

By Raietta

 

Chapter One

He couldn't see the light pooling below the window as it shone from a lamp post outside, but he could feel it. He could feel and taste and smell and hear a lot of things that other people couldn't. It made life interesting, to say the least. The rest of the apartment room was hidden in shadow, and Murdock kept it that way. It didn't make much of a difference to him, either way, if the place was unlit, and he knew that his visitor preferred it like this. Dark. Revealing little.

He didn't see the tall, lithe form slip through the window into his apartment, but he felt him. He felt the sudden change in air circulation, heard the minute, almost silent catch and slide of the window being opened, smelt the figure's expensive cologne, aftershave, sweat, his breath, the shampoo he used, the scent of leather and cigarette smoke. He smelt, heard, felt all of this in one instant as his midnight visitor stole into his room, and he smiled sightlessly into the darkness. An invisible shape bloomed before his eyes that did not see; his radar picked out the form, gave it an odd indescribable dimension.

"Hello, Remy," he greeted calmly, and the figure chuckled.

"Hey, Hornhead," the man replied, affectionately, and Matt Murdock smiled again.

A long-fingered hand grasped his own, and he could feel the tiny lines of old scars, calluses, the whorls of his fingerprints. The soft lifelines, the tiny rivers and tributaries of wrinkles in the firm flesh. His own hand was squeezed, fondly, lovingly, and a finger stroked his palm.

"Let's go see a movie," his lover said, the grin audible in his voice.

"I can't see, remember?" Matt replied, and found himself slowly embraced, enfolded in strong, long-muscled arms, held against a hard chest, ribs like clustered arches, a heartbeat as loud and steady as the chugging of a train across the plains.

"Like dat makes a difference," Remy smirked, running a clever hand through Murdock's hair, gently, gently.

"There�s nothing to see, anyway," Matt continued, rubbing his cheek against LeBeau's collarbone, delighting in the feel of that arch of calcium. "Nothing I feel like paying seven bucks to go to."

"Ain�t seven bucks at three in de mornin�, chèr."

"Whatever."

"Okay, no movie. Howabout we go out an� eat?" Now the clever hands that Matt loved were stroking down his back, running lightly over the knobs of his spine, caressing the thin shirt Matt was wearing. Every nerve danced along with Gambit's touch. His body was shouting with life.

He stepped closer into the heat of Remy's body, wrapped the other man's lithe, elegant frame with his own arms. "Do you want to?"

"Nah, not really. Jus� stopped by Burger King awhile ago, anyhow."

"Ick." Murdock grimaced.

"You don' like Burger King? Dat's freaky." The once-thief drew the lawyer even closer, until they almost melted into one creature, running and flowing into one another. Hands followed the dips and crests and slopes and hard planes of one another's bodies, carded through thick hair, and then, finally, lips touched flesh, Remy's satiny mouth discovering the taste of Daredevil's temple, and Daredevil finally remembering what Gambit's skin felt like against his own lips. He dipped out a tongue, and tasted him.

They flowed as one onto Matt's bed, sighs gracing the air, the darkened bedroom.

Remy lay on his back, stretching out, sinuously, pulling Matt on top of him. Matt followed him, began to pull at Remy's shirt.

"What's it like," LeBeau breathed softly, arching to let Matt strip away his shirt-- thin, cotton, a T-shirt with a design on it-- the design felt like a logo-- "Ron Jon's Surf Shop"-- "to taste things so strong, DD? What does a cheeseburger taste like, t' you? Is it disgusting? Is it too much? What's it like, seeing wit' your ears and mout' and hands, but not your eyes?"

Matt ran hands more sensitive than any other being's along his lover's bare chest, the silky skin, the erect disks with their sensitive nubs. He traced the features of Remy's face, relearning the elegant contours, the lovely shape of the mouth, the aristocratic nose, the delicate eyebrows, the lean, angled jaw. Remy was beautiful, Matt knew, even without his sight. He knew that Remy most loved him because he couldn't see him, couldn't look at his face and think, "how gorgeous," couldn't look at him at all and think, "what a babe." Matt understood. He saw how a man who had been noticed all his life for his beautiful face and body and not anything else would fall in love with a blind man, saw how much a man reduced to hiding behind the guise of a pretty boy would appreciate, adore, someone who, finally, could see him only for himself. You cannot hide from a blind man.

Matt understood. He understood why, when he'd asked what Remy looked like, Remy had replied, "I ain't much to look at, chèr." And even though Matt knew better, knew just how spectacular-looking Gambit really was, he never said it out loud. Because he knew that Remy needed silence more than anything else, and was silent for him, and let LeBeau's words and actions paint another picture for him. He understood.

"What's it like?" Matt echoed, gently nipping Remy's side. Gambit slid his hands under Murdock's shirt and drew it from his body. Legs tangled together, and a mouth hissed with pleasure. Hands roamed flesh. And even though Gambit whispered softly with pleasure, twisted into Matt's touch, Matt knew that he was still waiting for his answer.

He searched for the words to explain it, the sightless seeing. His hands mapped the contours of Gambit's body, lovingly, and Gambit's hands did the same. His eyes sparked with invisible fireworks.

"It's like seeing with heat vision, instead of normal sight," he tried, remembering how to speak, his lawyer's mind dusting off its eloquence, its mastery of language. Remy turned his cheek into Murdock's palm, rubbing. His groin arched into Matt's, coaxingly, promising. "It's like..." Murdock paused, straining for the words. "Remember before we had Digital Dolby Surround Sound? Before we had THX?" He could sense Remy's nod. "It's like that with me. Before, it was normal movie theater sound, tinny and dull. Nothing special. But now, it's like living in constant Surround Sound, a huge upgrade. See what I mean? I can feel every pore of your skin, I can hear your heart beating from here. It's like my senses are to everyone else's what Industrial Lights and Magic is to normal effects. Does that make any sense?"

"Yeah." Gambit smiled into Daredevil's hand. Matt could feel the muscles move, all of them. He wondered if he would ever be able to tell Remy just how beautiful he found him, just how incredible, just how thankful Matt was every day that Remy had consented to be with him, touch him, let himself be touched in turn. He wondered if Gambit would ever let him say it. It seemed doubtful. The shell around his heart, his mind, was too thick. Matt knew what Remy needed from him most was the honesty of darkness, where nothing needed to be proven. He understood, he understood.

In the darkness of the night room, Remy curled around Matt like a vine around the bole of a tree, clinging, being held up, supported. He twined arms and legs as graceful as a dancer's around his lover, and Matt lay down and gave over, began the merging. Skin slid against skin, muscle and muscle, and Gambit began to chuckle, murmuring words in Creole, and Daredevil moaned, feeling himself wash away on the inevitable tide of Remy's sex, which Remy always seemed to give to him, like a bribe. A bribe to keep Matt with him, as if without it Gambit wasn't enough, wasn't enough to stay with. As Matt felt himself melt into Remy's horizons of flesh, he could hear his own mind begin to click and whir into its old insecurities; this sex, a bribe, "use me, use me," Remy's body was crying, and was Matt being used as well? Did Remy sleep with him, stay with him, talk with him because Matt was safe? Because he represented something to Remy that he, in reality, didn't possess? Because he was a blind man who Remy could hide to, who was not an obstacle, who was an afterthought, a place to be when it got tough, being real?

Hands like doves settled over his face, so lovingly it hurt to feel it, those hands, and Matt became silent, within. His bones ached for this man, this man who was his first love, in a way, a sin that was not a sin, his first. "Love me, love me," Remy�s body cried, twining him close, so close that Matt thought he would die, so close time stopped, briefly, clear even to him.

In the end, Matt chose to let it go, those insecurities like dogs at his gate, crying. The bed was silent, cradling them, two long still forms learning to lean into one another, when it was not safe to. Matt wished he would know possession, with this man, but realized that that was a terrible pleasure, and let it go. He would never own Remy. A street light filtered sullenly through the bedroom window, splashing the bed thinly, the sheets, a curved arm. Matt drifted a hand down the long, lean muscle, the satin skin, the occasional scar of an old battle. Warrior. These old warriors in young skins, would he ever see to the end of this strange, lonely man? Would Remy ever let him? The Cajun�s soft breath was a cloud against his shoulder, his hair a wave of silk over his skin, which felt everything. Stay with me, Matt said silently, into Remy�s hair, which smelt of sweat and violets, incongruously. And thunder. I am so lonely, and so are you. Let us be replete and surrounded, for just a while. Please.

His lover stirred, trailed a clever finger over his chest. "What�re you thinkin�, chèr?" Such soft patois.

"Use me, use me," the silence of his lover cried, and Matt turned from it, refusing. It was never a question.

"I know you thinkin� something, Matt," Remy continued, smiling. Matt couldn�t see it, but he knew it was beautiful. "Your head always flyin� along at about a million miles a minute. Tell me."

Somewhere, below them, Matt�s neighbors were arguing, throwing dishes. Too far away and insulated for anyone to hear but Matt. Outside, a car blared its horn. Remy lay waiting, so Matt replied, almost without thought, his voice to the listening ceiling,

"The earth blurs, beyond me, into dark.
Spinning in such bewildered sleep, I need
To know you, whirring above me, when I wake.
Come down. Come down. I lie afraid.
I have lain alien in my self so long,
How can I understand love�s angry tongue?"

His voice was loud in the silence, echoing almost, his unspoken plea hanging in the still air.

Then, nothing.

Then, something.

A hand crept up to touch his cheek, ran a finger softly over a ridge of bone, so softly. A soft honeyed voice breathed into his ear, "I�ll be here when y� wake up, Matt. Right here, wit� you. You ain�t alone..."

The things he could say. I love you. You are my sea change, my vast renovation, my transformation. Stay with me. I am so alone. Let me into your dark closed castle. I love you. I understand that you are broken, inside. I understand. I love you. I understand.

Instead, he said only, "Let�s go see a movie." Remy laughed.

"Ain�t it a bit late fer dat, DD?" he asked, grinning so hard Matt could hear the smile in his voice. "It�s three in de mornin�." Remy rolled and leaned over Matt, rested his forearms to bracket Matt�s head, smiled down at him, hovering above him, hips cradling one another.

"This is the city that never sleeps, Gumbo. C�mon, let�s go. I know you�re not tired." His own hands reached up and unerringly found carved shoulder blades, smoothed down a curved spine.

"Me? Nah. I�m never tired. But you got a case t�morrow, don�t you?" Soft fingers in his hair, an unseen angel hovering over him. Come down. Come down.

"Not mine, really. Foggy�s. Let�s go."

Lips dipped and rose and met. Outside, he could hear the lanterns buzzing electricity, a discotheque rumbling blocks away. Remy tasted of strawberries, B.K. Whoppers, Crest toothpaste. Forearms nestled Matt�s head. The kiss went on.

Finally, they broke apart. Remy laughed down to Matt. "Let�s go, den."

And they did.

 

TBC in Part 2