@deviltoothed // VICTOR CREED.
The problem, intrinsically, wasn’t the fact that he was stuck on a mission with Sabretooth. That much was unpleasant, but it was still tolerable - Remy had enough of that signature sass and flippantry to be amusing to the other, to the point where he wasn’t afraid of being hurt.
It was a mess, but it was companionable enough, and they’d gotten the work done fairly quickly, all things considered. The collateral damage was off the charts, but honestly? It was Gambit and Sabretooth. Unsupervised.
(That was on the idiots who’d assigned the work to them, hands down.)
Remy’s luck runs out in the worst way possible when they start the return trip, winding through the mountains. He spots the nasty, heavy clouds far off, and he crosses his fingers, but Lady Luck is unfortunately a bit of a fickle bitch, and she’s always loved tormenting the Cajun.
The snow starts a few hours later, heavy and white and so cold, and Victor grunts and drives them even higher up, and apparently there’s an old ski lodge that closed down last year and it makes plenty of sense but the only thing in Remy’s head is a dull buzz and the thud-thud stuttering of his heart.
(He touches the window, frosting over and nearly impossible to see through, and flinches, jerking his hand back as though it’s bitten him.)
He cranks the heat up all the way, uncaring about if he’s wasting fuels, and ignores Victor’s snarls and little taunts, huddling up in his seat.
Remy manages to hold it together - kinda - all the way up until they stumble into a shitty old cabin and Vic’s poking at the fire, grumbling the whole time about the useless pretty boy he’s stuck with.
When he turns to fix the thief with a little glint in his eye, Remy knows he’s fucked up. The weighty reticence, the way he’s curled in on himself, and shit he’s sure he’s drenched in the scent of unease - he’s made himself a target, he’s turned himself into prey, and the thing he fears is obvious.
He knows that Vic doesn’t know when he hauls him up by the collar and chucks him out the door with a rumbling laugh, all pleased to be getting to him somehow when normally their insults and pranks would bounce off each other, further nastiness held only in check by an uneasy alliance.
He knows he doesn’t know, but it doesn’t matter, because he fucking loses it.
Remy throws himself at the door, bawling, terrified, tears and snot streaking down his chin as his fists pound at the wood and somewhere deep in the back of his head he knows it’s not Antarctica, he knows Victor isn’t going to let him freeze to death - there’s no benefit to it right now, but that smart little piece of him is buried under animal panic, and his fingers are bleeding within a minute, nails torn as he tries to claw his way back to the warmth.
The broken sobs hitching from his throat are mangled, nonsensical French and English and a bit of Creole too, he thinks maybe he screams for help in Chinese once, fragments of pleas his mind is too scattered to form coherently.
But the door doesn’t open, and against every tiny voice inside that warns no, don’t, you’re heading away from safety he stumbles out further into the snow, eyes darting about frantically, teeth chattering because can’tstopmovinggottagogottamovegonnadiegonnadieKEEPGOING -
His eyes are so fogged over with ice that isn’t there that the only thing he can see is his breath hanging white on the air with each frantic little huff.