A/N: I'm really going to try to stick with this one.

Disclaimer: Don't own anything.


Chapter 1: Dirty Cheat

Squeezing the excess water out of her long, white streaked hair, Rogue wrapped a fluffy, pink towel around her lean body and stepped over the threshold from her bathroom to her bedroom. She turned the radio on without thinking and started digging through her dresser. A Sublime song came on, and she turned up the volume and grabbed a hair brush, using it as microphone as she sang along and danced around her room.

Still singing, she dropped her towel and slipped a lacy black thong on. Adding a matching bra, she ignored the nagging voice in the back of her mind that kept saying that no one would ever see it. After a few more minutes of digging through her spectactularly disorganized dresser, she settled on a pair of skin tight jeans and a black, low cut, long sleeved top. She dried her hair and pinned it up in a bun with a pair of chop sticks, leaving the white strands loose around her face. She put some makeup on but kept it subtle, and she wrapped a silky, green scarf around her neck. Once she was happy with her appearance, she pulled on her favorite pair of gloves, the ones that Bobby had given her for their one month anniversary, and stuck her feet into a pair of low stilettos.

Grabbing her purse on her way out, she headed down the hallway to Bobby's dorm. She had been looking forward to their date all day. All the focus lately was on finals and graduation and training, so they got almost no alone time anymore. She practically skipped to Bobby's door. Like usual, she didn't knock and just walked into his room.

"I'm ready to..." her voice trailed off and she stopped dead in her tracks, paralyzed by the sight of one of her best friends and her boyfriend making out on his bed.

Bobby pushed Kitty Pryde away as soon as he heard Rogue's voice. He rushed to get up and started mumbling and stuttering as he tried to find the right words to explain.

Rogue didn't hear anything that he was saying, too busy looking from Bobby's pleading eyes to Kitty's shameful expression to pay attention to anything else. The reality of the situation sank in abruptly, and she felt like her heart had been ripped out of her chest.

"How could you?" she whispered. Bobby took a step toward her, his voice growing more hysteric by the second. Not knowing what else to do, Rogue tried to run, but Bobby caught her wrist, touching the small span of bare skin between her sleeve and her glove. Feeling her powers kicking, she frantically tried to pry his fingers off of her wrist. Once she managed to get of his grip, she bolted out of the room without looking back.


Flipping through the TV channels, Kevin Ford yawned out of boredom. Eight hundred channels and nothing to watch. He got up and went into the kitchen, dusting some crumbs off of his shirt. There wasn't much food in the house but he found a dusty box of maccaroni and cheese behind some cans of cream of broccoli soup. It was probably as old as he was, but he made it anyway. While he waited for his maccaroni, he took a closer look at his shirt, trying to figure out why the crumbs weren't coming off. Upon closer inspection, he realized that the crumbs were actually tiny holes. He didn't think much of it. It was an old shirt, and he was surprised it hadn't fallen apart months ago.

Fifteen minutes later he was sitting in front of the TV again, eating with one hand and working the remote with the other. Shoveling spoonfuls of cheesy noddles into his mouth, he started to feel like there was something moving against his leg, but when he looked down, he didn't see anything. The feeling didn't go away though, and the next time he looked down at his leg, he saw the rip in the knee of his jeans slowly growing larger. His shirt was deteriorating even faster.


It had been going on for three months, as far as Rogue could tell from Bobby's memories. He kissed Kitty for the first time while she was away with Logan, looking for Jean's body again. He slept with Kitty for the first time two months later on a night when he canceled a date with Rogue, saying he had an important test to study for.

She could feel what he felt, comfort, pleasure, barely a tinge of guilt, love, and it was killing her. He was in love with someone else, but he stayed with her because he didn't want to be the insensitive bastard who broke up with the untouchable girl. He opted to be the insensitive bastard who cheated on her instead.

He was knocking on her door, begging to be let in, telling her that he loved her. She wanted to scream at him, slam the door in his face, tell him she hated him, hit him, anything that would inflict some kind of pain on him, but she couldn't bring herself to do it. In the back of her mind, she didn't blame him for seeking out the physical comfort that she couldn't give him. The thought of facing him filled her with dread, so, purely on instinct, she went to the window and climbed out, jumping a good three feet with little effort onto a thick branch of a big oak tree. She quickly climbed down to the ground and ran to the garage.

At first she went to the Volkswagen she shared with Kitty and Jubilee, but she wanted to be as far from anything that reminded her of Kitty as physically possible. So she got on Scott's motorcycle and hot-wired it, a handy skill she had inherited from Storm during an accidental touch in the Danger Room a few weeks back. She was out on the road, going 80 in a 35, in a matter of seconds.


"Kevin, I'm home," Mr. Ford called as he walked in through the front door and dropped his brief case. When his son didn't respond, he got a little worried. "Kevin? Where are you?" He wandered into Kevin's room to find him frantically going through the clothes in his closet.

Every time Kevin touched an article of clothing, it decayed in his hands, just like the ones he had been wearing. He was beyond freaked by the time his dad walked in.

"Everything keeps falling apart," Kevin whaled, sinking down to the floor. Even the wall he leaned against started to deteriorate. "What's wrong with me?"

"It's okay," Mr. Ford said in a comforting voice, pulling Kevin into a tight hug. "You just need to calm down."

Neither of them realized what was happening, but as their skin touched the same thing that happened to all of Kevin's clothes began to happen to his father. He didn't know something was wrong until the older man collapse, lifeless.

"Dad? Dad, wake up," Kevin said, shaking his dad violently in an attempt to wake him. He was in hysterics again, touching his dad more and more and only making things worse and worse. It wasn't long before it became clear that he was dead, and Kevin broke down completely, tears streaming down his face as he held the body. Once it had turned completely to ash, he ran.


A/N: Please review.

For anyone who doesn't read the comics, Kevin isn't an OC.