She rolls up underneath him and he goes with her, running his hands up her belly and over her perfect breasts as she cries out. He cups one with his fingers before leaning over to take her right nipple in his teeth, sucking hard and feeling her clench around him even as she bucks into his hips again. He grasps her sides bruisingly.

"John. Please. We can help you." Rouge pleaded. Yeah, well what did she know about anything?

His silence was almost unbearable, normally raging eyes mute with cold fury. And yet, he still refused to speak.

"Come back with us. The Professor—"

"Your Professor can go fuck himself." The amount of anger behind the quiet but fiercely spoken words actually caused her to draw back. He spat the word 'professor' as if it tasted vile.

Bobby, who had been silent before this, studying John intently but not understanding for all that he might have thought he had, spoke up, "John—he didn't—we didn't realize you were upset…that you were hurting…" Bobby was hesitant; afraid almost that he might make a single mistake and send John over the edge.

"You didn't care." These words are snarled with such intense honesty and rage, it's as if he's physically struck the both of them. There used to be a time when Rouge could calm him with a soft word or a gentle touch—she alone was capable of soothing his uncontrollable temper. The fire that lived inside him made him feral, and she understood that. Rouge reached out to brush a gloved finger against his cheek, hoping against hope old tricks work might still work magic on new dogs.

"You're so angry," she whispered. And for a moment, she had him. His blue eyes closed briefly, and he relaxed; her caress was almost as seductive as the fire with which he played. Tears filled her eyes, but did not fall—when he looked later, he would see them. John couldn't control pain and so pain became hate. John knew how to use hate.

She moans his name over and over as they rock heavily against the disheveled sheets. Sweat runs in rivulets over his shoulder blades and down his spine. He twists his fingers in a handful of black and white-streaked hair, fiercely, lovingly. Her soft hand slips over the small of his back and grips the firm curve of his butt. And then his mouth is crushing against her, hungry, soft, hard, loving, hurting, and raging all at the same time and she likes it, moaning back, their tongues twisting and tasting. The rhythm is driving and he can feel that she's close. Both of his rough hands grasp her breasts, and he runs his thumbs over them, enjoying how real and palpable everything about her is. She is no longer a porcelain doll not to be touched. She's his now.

His eyes flew open, and the hurt was clear to see in them. And the betrayal, which she understood better than Bobby ever coukd. Yes, John was the one who left them, not the other way around. Yes, John had gone with Magneto and Mystique, had gone with the "bad guys." She could look into him, and see through him, know that he had done what he had because he had believed he had no other choice.

He took her hand away so roughly she had to struggle not to cry out. His expression snarled "Don't touch me."

"You know what…what it's like." He knew she knew, because she touched him on Bobby's family's porch.

"No John, I don't—" She lied, because she couldn't bear to admit it. Admitting it would mean acknowledging that John failed to keep control time and again because he simply could not, and not because he didn't try hard enough.

"Yes you do." His voice broke on the word 'you' and he sounded frightened, and miserable, and alone. She refused to meet his eyes, and the fresh agony that was written all over him, and she realized she had caused it yet again. He'd seen it coming, too—she'd turned her back on him when she'd taken Bobby's side rather than trying to mediate, that night of the day he'd blown up the police cars. When she'd been the last player left on the field, the last person in his way from starting down a long, self-destructive road, she'd simply stepped aside.

Bobby tried to come to his side, tried to find his best friend in the mess of anguish and violent rage that stood in front of him, and John shoved him back—hard. Bobby landed on a park bench. John placed a finger lightly on Rouge's bare lips, whispered "Marie" against her ear, and then passed her by as he'd done everyone else in his life.

She broke against him with a pleasurable scream, wet spilling between them, and he felt himself about to go as well. And then, she pulls away, a beautiful young woman naked on the bed, him next to her feeling like he's about to blow. His face is flushed from exertion, and embarrassed, he reaches down to grasp his swollen cock, applying pressure and letting out a cry as the orgasm takes him. She watches him with a slightly crooked, cruel smile that didn't fit her soft features, before rising, and running a hand along the shame-faced boy's back fondly.

Mystique allowed Rouge's appearance to shift into her own, and let the door slip closed behind her.