A hotel as a place to hide

[Shade]

She gave a dry chuckle, picking another fork full of salad. There was no edge or other uneasyness in his voice, which told Shade he was okay talking about it and she was not treading on dangerous territory. "Sounds like a dangerous combination." she said, scowling inwardly at her choice of words, but feeling that somehow it was better to give the matter conscious thought instead of dismissing it at once.

[Gambit]

"Dat, an' combined wit' de fact dat she's an Assassin, ya get de picture," Gambit said. Perhaps it was better Shade knew all this; if Bella Donna was starting to express a desire to come over and meet his girlfriend, Shade was better warned, at least in theory.

[Shade]

"Oh." Shade said. The thought was not too reassuring, trying to reform her picture of Gambit´s background. "So then it´s Assassins and Thieves?" she wondered aloud. For some reason up till now she had thought that there were two thieving guilds down in New Orleans that were getting at each other.

[Gambit]

"Dere are some other ones, too, but dese two are de most influential," Gambit nodded, taking another spoonful of his salad. What a nice and relaxing dinner conversation.

[Shade]

Shade nodded, taking a sip of her soft drink. It was a strange matter to discuss while they were eating, far more serious than they were making it sound, but this it seemed was the easiest way to do so. And although all that seemed dangerous and was making her faintly uneasy, it was helping her to get to know Gambit better. It was strange, after more than four months together there was still so much she didn´t know.

"Considering all this," she said. "should Shade take care of her neck?" Her question was not too serious, but was not too joking either, not making fun of the matter but trying to keep the rather relaxed atmosphere and at the same time mouthing another thought. His wife had been pissed and she was an assassin. Did that put her into danger? She did not really fear for that as she knew pretty well Gambit was capable of keeping her out of harm´s way, but it was a question on several levels. One of these levels was: did his wife know about her husband´s girlfriend and if so, how did she react to that?

[Gambit]

"Ya should," Gambit replied in the same one, "but it won' help a thing. Ya won't even know what hit ya." He got himself a bottle and screwed the cap off. "Leave it t' Gambit."

[Shade]

It was a typical Gambit answer and although he was taking on the same not too serious tone, Shade knew that he was not really kidding. "I will." she said looking up from her food to make eye contact. "He´s done a good job so far keeping me safe."

[Gambit]

"What wit' de kidnappin' an' de crash?" Gambit snorted. "I bet."

[Shade]

Shade chuckled slightly. She knew that he had felt guilty for the first mentioned, but still she did not see it as his fault only as he had gotten her out. "Both those incidents could have ended much worse." she said in a no kidding but normal voice. "but they didn´t."

[Gambit]

"Okay," Gambit shrugged, not really wishing to discuss it further.

[Shade]

His short reply was kind of a full stop to that point of their conversation and Shade accepted it. She understood a little more now, not the roots of his earlier gloomyness but at least some backgrounds that were likely to be interwoven with it. Going deeper there would mean to dig up the same sort of demand she had shown on the bridge which was something she did not want to do. She gave Gambit a brief smile.

But there was something else she remembered. It was not that she had felt much desire to go to the club these last few days, espcially since there had always been something to do with the beach trip and people to meet at the mansion. But with Rogue back now, they might get into the mood of going somewhere in the city and the Hellfire had been a popular place to hang out for them at times. "Do you still want me to stay away from the Hellfire?" she asked after a moment. "just so I can think of excuses.Rogue´s back at the mansion and we went there now and then."

[Gambit]

Gambit ate some more of his salad, washed the salty taste down with a gulp of soda and shook his head. "Non, it be safe for ya now." With Emma Frost gone again, he was fairly sure nobody else would want to get Shade or him through Shade. Unless, of course, Shaw would mysteriously re-appear, but that was an altogether different matter, and Shaw's abilities were different, so that could be disregarded for now.

[Shade]

"Okay." Shade said, finishing on her dinner, then shifted and lay down on her stomach. It felt a little bit like she was interrogating Gambit, as it was her with all the questions in this conversation. "I´m asking a lot at once." she said. "but I somehow feel I have to and want to. Because you matter a lot to me and because some part of me wants to understand more about you. The way you think and what things may worry you. Because I´m still curious about you." And because earlier tonight, she added in thought, there was a moment when I thought I had no idea what is on your mind and it made me sad to know so little about you.

[Gambit]

"Ya don' have to explain yourself," Gambit said.

[Shade]

Shade noticed her words had indeed sounded somewhat like a justification, even though she had not intended them that way. They had come to her mind impulsively, just as she had sorted through them aloud the moment they appeared. "I know." she said. During the previous days she had once more noticed how much she missed his presence when he was not around and this evening had shown her once more that even though he had told her the one or other thing about himself, there were still wide gaps in her knowledge of him to put it in a practical way. "I´ll just keep adding pieces to my little puzzle then."