DISCLAIMER: Characters and settings don't belong to me. This story does, though. Also, I make no profit
Thanks to SerialKarma for betareading.


+A GLOVE WITH THE FINGERS WITHDRAWN+




There were a lot of things that could be said and every one of them felt wrong.

"I guess I could've seen it coming," Bobby was saying. "I should have, but… I don't know. Maybe there was something else, maybe we could've…"

It was a familiar speech.

Pretend: this was just a regular Sunday afternoon. Pretend: that was not a man with blue skin walking across a lawn, and he was not talking to someone who could shoot lasers from his eyes. Pretend: any second now this girl would raise her head and kiss her boyfriend, like any normal girl was wont to do.

They were sitting in the garden, a tangle of arms and legs under the shade of a tree. Rogue rested the side of her face on his chest and Bobby absently stroked the small of her back.

She didn't catch Bobby's question, and he repeated it: "Don't you think so?"

"Don't I think what?"

"That there could have been another way."

Rogue lifted her head to look him in the eye, but Bobby was looking somewhere else. He seemed to be contemplating the second-floor windows, but Rogue knew it wasn't the mansion he was seeing.

"Yes," she said. "There could have been."


+


When Rogue stumbled across Bobby and John in the library, she didn't let out so much as a gasp. Retracing her steps, she kept her eyes on the floor and her pace even until she was out of the library, out of the wing, out of the mansion, and on the other side of the building.

She punched the wall. And again. And again againagainagain. A volley of fists with sickening cracks and increasing speed. Brick dust. Torn gloves.

With the last hit, Rogue screamed in a voice that sounded hideously inconsequential in the silence. The momentary numbness was replaced by a welcome rush of pain. She dug her fingers into the cracks, relishing it.

When she joined her friends for dinner, she smiled. Things slipped into routine. Rogue laughed with half-chewed food in her mouth, rolled her eyes at stupid jokes, and noticed the way John would rest his hand on the back of Bobby's chair. Bobby would push John back to talk to Jubilee and his hand would linger on John's shoulder. Only just. Never long enough for anyone to notice if they weren't looking for it.

"New gloves?" asked John, looking at her hands.

"I've had them for a while."

He nodded. "They're nice."

Later at night, her friends had gone, all smiles and winks as they did, and Rogue was alone in her room. She was counting stars by the window when Bobby came in. Her jacket and boots lay discarded on a chair, but she hadn't changed into her nightgown.

"What are you looking at?" asked Bobby.

"Nothing," she said and, when he slipped his arms around her waist, it was true.

"You look restless." She felt the warm press of his body against her back, and shivered at the contact. "Are you cold?"

"Strange question coming from you."

Bobby kissed her neck through a thick curtain of hair. "Not really."

He kissed her shoulder through the fabric of her blouse. "Bobby—" Rogue barely had time to turn in his arms before they fell to the bed.

Initially Rogue hadn't been too comfortable with these trysts, even if they were still clothed. She blushed in the darkness as Bobby kissed the underside of her breasts or took a nipple into his mouth. But teenage lust conquers, if not all, then a great many things. Tonight, there were bites and bruising grips to compensate for the lack of real touch as she waited for him to call her the wrong name. With a simple maneuver, she flipped their positions: Bobby on his back, she straddling his hips.

"Take off your shirt," she said. He obliged.

"What?" asked Bobby, as she examined his skin with scientific meticulousness. "What are you looking for?"

Love bites where she didn't bite. Bruises where she didn't touch. Burn marks.

She wanted to say: "You were kissing St. John Allerdyce behind the Art History section. Why?"

She said: "Nothing."


+


"You wanna go back inside?"

"Sure."

She pulled Bobby to his feet and they walked hand in hand with their eyes to the ground: a picture of young love in the sun. Rogue slipped her arm around Bobby's waist, pulling him closer. He draped his arm around her shoulder and she rested her head on his. They didn't fit when they tried to go through the door. The compulsory round of you-firsts was followed by compulsory awkward smiles. Still twined around each other and reluctant to let go, they stared at the doorway like it was some ancient riddle.

"We're still going in, right?" asked Rogue.

Bobby placed both hands on her hips and gently moved her in front of him. With his hands on her stomach and his chin on her shoulder, they entered the mansion together with an awkward, swaying walk. A couple of nearby students stared, but neither Bobby nor Rogue seemed to mind.


+


"No shit?"

John shook his head. "No."

They stared at each other across the table, poker-faced. Rogue raised an eyebrow challengingly. John mirrored her with a seriousness that was undermined a moment later by snickering.

"You asshole!" Rogue exclaimed, slapping his arm. She smiled.

"I had you there," he laughed, blocking her attacks with his notebook. "The look on your face—"

"You did not have me, in any way, shape, or form!" she said. "My mother saw the face of John the Apostle in the afterbirth," she mimicked, and rolled her eyes when John only laughed more. "I'd like some credit—"

"But do you deserve it? Ow. Ow! Ow, dammit, Rogue!"

And she continued to smack him, and he continued to curse, and she knew they were going to get kicked out of the library, because John was running now, dodging between the shelves, and she gleefully pursued.

She lost him somewhere past the encyclopaedias.

Then: footsteps behind the Anthropology section. Creeping to the end of the bookcase, she leapt to the next aisle with a "Ha!" at the ready. It became more of a "H-mmph!" as John threw himself full-tilt at her, sending them tumbling into the opposite aisle. Tripping over one another, they fell to the ground and held their breaths as the shelves shook, giggling nervously when they stilled.

From under John, Rogue said, "You are. An asshole."

"I think we've covered that," said John, breathlessly.

"So, it's not because your mother saw whatever in the afterbirth. And it's obviously not because it's true."

"She catches on," John said, and tried to stand. 'Tried' was the key word. Rogue held him: one arm around his waist, one hand around his wrist beside her head. Rogue stared him down: two eyes that stared into his with a forthrightness that seemed to unnerve him.

Rogue didn't hate John. Whether this was because she genuinely didn't, or because she told herself she didn't was up for debate. Her instincts told her not to rock the boat when it already sported a sizeable leak. They told her to stay on a sinking ship. (The water's too cold, the shore's too far away, the currents are flowing in the wrong direction.) John and Bobby were two people she didn't want to mess anything up with. But.

It would be so easy to slide her hand around John's neck, pull him down, and kiss him. She could imagine the exhilaration. All the What is it like to kiss him? and the What does he taste like? and the Why is it you who knows the answers to these questions and not me?

She could see it in her mind: flame at her fingertips and bending to her will. Baptism by fire, and a new identity surging in. The memories of wayward lonely nights; of Bobby's tongue parting her lips and tasting her, warm and slow; of Bobby's skin under her fingers. All this in a bittersweet river from his mouth to hers, and she could see it. Could see John's face blanching and his struggles weakening as the fire in his eyes flared and flickered and died.

"Saint John," she said.

"Marie," he replied, but the wryness fell flat.

She reached up a hand and touched his lips. He jerked away. Too much momentum. His back hit the bookcase and it shook again. There were no giggles this time.

"Sorry," she said. The words felt clumsy in her mouth, and the sentiment behind them even more so.

A new voice said, "Well, then."

They jumped.

Mr. Summers raised his eyebrow, laying down the guilt-inducing silence; framework for the upcoming lecture.

The defence mechanisms kicked in: Rogue stared at the floor; John crossed his arms and looked his teacher in the eye like Scott was the transgressor instead of him.

"There's a place for studying, and there's a place for cavorting like uncivilised hooligans," said Mr. Summers. "Guess which place this is."

Rogue was sure Mr. Summers's lecture was wrought with many a meaningful life lesson, all of which flew over her head as John's presence eighteen inches away burned in her mind. She was pretty sure she was turning red.

It wasn't lost on Scott. Rogue's mind was clearly not on the lecture, and though John's gaze was unwavering, it was also blank. The boy's focus was elsewhere, and Scott didn't need to guess where. The two were busy ignoring each other and, in the process, they were ignoring him.

"Let's get back to the class now," Scott concluded.

And they did.

Rogue sat at a table with Kitty, while John sat at the next table with Jubilee and Piotr. The backs of their chairs faced each other, and they were as yin yang reflections. John: slouched, chair balanced on the two back legs, one hand holding the table edge to steady himself; and Rogue: back straight, hands on her lap, staring at her unopened notebook.

Her friends' silence was tangible, and understandable. What they saw was John and Rogue laughing and running off like the best of friends, and then coming back like this. Nobody wanted to be the first to ask questions.

Thump went John's chair as it went back on all four legs. There was the Zippo. Click open, click close. Click open.

"You're gonna set the fire alarm off," said Jubilee.

"No I won't."

"Put it away or it's mine, Allerdyce," said Mr. Summers, appearing at their side with the impeccable timing teachers the world over seemed to have.

There was a lengthy pause before the click-close.

Rogue opened her notebook and began her classwork.


+


They ended up in the kitchen: sunny, warm, deserted. The gallon of vanilla fudge sat on the table between them. They shared a spoon.

"Don't scoop them up so big," she said. "Won't fit in my mouth, then."

Bobby put the spoon to his lips and ate half the spoonful, then offered it again. She ate it, and Bobby put the spoon in his mouth.

"I think the idea is to get the ice cream first, then put it in your mouth," said Rogue, smiling good-naturedly.

He took the spoon out of his mouth, licked it, and said, "No it's not."

Rogue remembered the library. Be careful what you wish for. Wasn't that what they said? And now after Boston…

Bobby's hand hovered beneath her chin and she lifted her face as if he had touched her. He looked at her with those disarming blue eyes, and Rogue knew that those eyes fluttered closed if you kissed the base of his neck, tongue flicking against the skin. Bobby tasted sour-sweet. The breath would catch in his throat if you kissed a trail down his chest, his abdomen, and lower still…

"Come here," Bobby whispered.

It had been awkward when they returned from Canada and realised what--who--was in Rogue's head. She thought maybe she would hide it, just so they could pretend everything was okay. That was before Bobby asked, "Marie, when you kissed me, and when… when you touched him, back at my house. What did you see?" And Bobby could read it in her face and there had been no more room for secrets.

Now he acted as if she were made of glass. Why did you kiss me at all? she wanted to ask, but there was an air of repentance around him that confused her, and scared her slightly. Rogue didn't know what she ought to do, how she ought to feel, at all.

She sat on his lap and he rested his head on her chest, curled into each other as much as they could atop a kitchen chair.

"I love you," said Bobby.

There was a long pause as Rogue considered her reaction. She wanted to hit Bobby and scream and make him realise 'I love you' and 'I'm sorry' are two different things. Rogue knew he didn't mean it, but she didn't want him to take it back.

"I…" He looked up. "I never want to see you hurt. I'd never want to hurt you. You know that, right? I'm…"

She listened as his clumsy apology came to a stumbling halt. Rogue kissed the top of his head, and rested her cheek against the blond curls. Bobby held her tighter in his arms.

The ice cream was melting on the table and neither of them cared.




[end.]