Too Good To Be True
Part One
Rogue sank the eight-ball in the corner pocket with a single stroke, her gloved hands spinning the long wooden cue up by her side almost before the ball had finished its journey. "I think that means you owe me fifty bucks, sugar," she said cheerfully, to the brown-haired, green-eyed woman who stood on the other side of the pool table with her arms folded across her breasts, and her lips pursed in mock-annoyance.
"How much have you practiced doing that?" Jenny Franklin asked rhetorically, knowing that she didn't really want to know the answer – it would probably just make her feel inadequate, after all. "That's five straight games you've won. What's your secret, Lou?"
Rogue flushed involuntarily, and then swallowed her heart as it leapt into her throat. She still wasn't quite accustomed to having her real name used in public, which sometimes meant that she would react quite badly to it, as she had just now. She took a deep breath, and fanned herself with her hand. "Sorry, Jen," she said, her thick Mississippi accent adding an attractive twang to her words. "Just been called 'Rogue' for so long I almost forgot what it's like to be called my given name." She paused, clearing her throat, before she put the cue down and continued "Anyway: I'll teach you what Remy taught me, if you want." She moved around the table, picking up Jenny's cue and handing it to her. "C'mon, sweetie –won't do you no harm to find out what makes a pool master, will it?" She put another couple of silver dollars into the pool table's money slot, and the balls tumbled out, ready and waiting. Then, moving in close to the other woman, she gripped the cue over her girlfriend's hands, gently guiding them towards the best position needed to hit a great shot.
"Now what do I do?" Jenny asked, her voice thick with concentration, as she splayed her fingers and took aim. Rogue stood away from her slowly, and then laid her hands on the table's polished side.
"Just hit the ball, and let gravity do the rest," she said softly.
Jenny shrugged. "If you say so…" She drew back her cue and struck the white ball square in the centre of its mass. It rolled quickly across the green baize and hit a solid red ball with a satisfyingly thick sound, causing the red ball to roll across the table and sink itself in a side pocket. As it did so, Jenny squealed with delight, before lining up another multicoloured ball and jabbing it ruthlessly into a top corner pocket. "Third time's a charm," she muttered quietly, before potting one last ball, and then blowing some excess chalk off the end of her cue, as if she were blowing smoke off the barrel of a gun. "Yup, looks like I got the hang of that, pilgrim," she said in a deep, gravely, Eastwood-style tone. "Thanks, Lou – now maybe I can beat you, finally."
"Like hell you can," Rogue laughed, winking. "I got your number, darlin' – you're never gonna win when you play me."
Jenny raised an eyebrow, and then slapped another twenty-dollar bill down onto the pool table's surface. "Oh, really? Well, I think this says you can't, don't you?"
Rogue rolled her eyes. "Girl, when are you ever gonna learn? You keep makin' those kinda bets, you're just gonna keep losin' money..." She shrugged. "But if you want me to teach you that kinda lesson myself, I'll be more'n happy to." She pointed at the balls scattered over the table, and clicked her fingers. "Rack 'em up, Rawhide."
Jenny laughed, and began gathering up the balls. "You got it, pardner..."
Hours later, Rogue stretched herself out on the hotel bed that she had been sharing with Jenny for the past two days, and then turned on her side so that she could talk to her companion, as Jenny splashed her face with cold water from the room's small en-suite bathroom. "I hope you learned your lesson today, honey," she said lightly, her lips pursed slightly in order to stop a guilty laugh escaping them.
"Yes, I think I did," Jenny replied, drying her cheeks off with a pristine white hand towel and then walking towards the bed with slow, cat-like strides. "Never make a bet with a Mississippi girl."
"Damn straight," Rogue laughed. "How much did you lose? A hundred bucks? Two hundred?"
"I lost count after the first hundred. I guess I need more practice, huh?" Jenny said, sliding down next to Rogue gently, her bare fingers touching Rogue's unclothed shoulder. Rogue flinched reflexively until she felt the familiar bioelectric buzz pass between her lover's skin and her own. The low-level electrical static that Jenny's body generated continuously formed a disruption that prevented her powers from taking effect, allowing her prolonged human contact, without depriving her of her powers, for the first time in her adult life.
Rogue planned to take full advantage of that.
"Guess you do, at that," she said, leaning close to the other woman and brushing her lips across the soft, inviting pink of Jenny's mouth, capturing the two delicate rosebuds in a still-hesitant kiss. As she did so, she felt the tingle again, small sparks literally crackling between them as they touched, and she felt her stomach lurch once more. At the same time, she felt her breath catch in her throat for a moment or two, as she automatically expected to feel the familiar rush of memories and powers flooding into her body, without any way of stopping it.
But she didn't. Oh, sweet Lord Jesus, she didn't. The sensation of another person being drawn inside her, in a perverse inversion of how sex ought to be, did not happen – and not for the first time, Rogue felt an ecstatic tear roll down her cheek. She broke the kiss abruptly, and wiped self-consciously at the salt trail with her fingertips. "Sorry, Jen," she said hoarsely. "Guess I'm still not completely used to that, either."
Jenny tilted her head slightly, and then helped Rogue to dry her face, touching her lover's wet cheek with her towel, before she drew her closer and put her arms around her, her damp hair spilling around her shoulders and down between her shoulder blades. "Don't worry about it, Lou," she murmured, her voice quiet. "I understand. I really do." Gently, she pointed towards the crumpled bundle of her clothes on the floor beside the bed. "I could put something on, if you wanted me to –"
Rogue laughed, despite herself. "No, that's all right, sugar. Might as well face up to this sometime, I guess – can't keep hiding from it all my life." Her voice took on a stronger edge, and she intertwined her fingers with Jenny's, squeezing tightly as she brought both their hands up between the two of them. "I've spent too long being protected from this. I want to know what other people feel when they touch somebody, Jen. I've always wanted to feel that – and now that I can, I feel scared about it." She laughed bitterly. "Isn't that just the stupidest thing you've ever heard?"
Jenny reached out with her free hand and brushed Rogue's face with her fingertips, tracing the topography of the soft lines of Rogue's cheek and jaw with practiced ease and leaving small blue arcs of electricity crawling briefly across Rogue's skin. "That's natural, Lou," she whispered. "It's called 'the fear of the unknown'." She nodded towards the battered old TV in the corner of the room, and raised her eyebrows. "You only have to turn on the evening news to know that you're not the only one who gets that feeling from time to time. It's human nature, that's all." She paused, taking a deep breath. "It'll pass, I promise."
"I hope so," Rogue murmured in a soft voice. "I don't want to be afraid of touching you, Jen."
"I don't want that, either," Jenny replied, edging herself closer to Rogue a few centimetres at a time, until finally Rogue could feel the heat of her breath on her face – could smell the scent of sandalwood in her hair, and spring water on her skin – until there seemed to be little else in the room apart from Jenny's face. Her eyes almost filled Rogue's field of vision, a passionate explosion of jade in the still drabness of the room. "I love you, Louise Darkholme." She traced her lips delicately along the taut lines of Rogue's throat, feeling the super-strong muscles underneath the skin trembling uncontrollably with every butterfly-soft touch. "I want to show you just how much."
*
Steam had misted the inside of the room's windows. The sheets of the bed were strewn in a heap on the floor. Rogue, meanwhile, lay entwined in a tangled mass of arms and legs with Jenny, who was absently stroking Rogue's hair in between planting occasional kisses on the other woman's forehead. "So, did you like?" she asked playfully, running her fingers through a couple of auburn ringlets, and shifting her position so that Rogue rested more comfortably against her stomach.
"Is that a trick question?" Rogue asked, looking up at Jenny over the curve of the other woman's breasts, her eyebrows raised curiously. "'Cause if it is, I'd hate to give you a wrong answer."
Jenny laughed. "No trick. I'm just asking for an honest opinion – I used to have a girlfriend who would keep score of her partners in her diary, you see, and I accidentally found out I wasn't the best she'd ever had, like she'd been leading me to believe. Ever since then, I've asked every single girl I've been with to tell me the opposite, just to stick it to her." She took a deep breath exhaling quickly so as to move some troublesome tawny hair out of her eyes and squeezed Rogue a little. "So – how'd I do? Excellent, passable, or just plain bad?"
"Oh, you were great with a capital G," Rogue replied, her cheeks flushing. "But then again, I ain't exactly got a huge amount of experience where girls are concerned, so that probably don't mean all that much."
"Ouch." Jenny dug at Rogue's ribs in mock-annoyance, before nuzzling her at the base of her neck. "Has anybody ever told you that you have a talent for building people up – and then knocking them right back down again?"
"Yeah, all the time," Rogue chuckled, reaching up and cupping her girlfriend's cheek in her palm for a moment or two. "Remy used to call it my 'other mutant power'. Goofy, huh?"
Jenny laughed, and then shook her head. "No, not at all; in fact, it sounds to me like he knew exactly what he was talking about." She paused, and then looked down at Rogue for a moment or two. "Remy seems like a very perceptive kind of guy."
"He was," Rogue whispered, suddenly very downbeat. "He is. I've never met anybody like him."
Jenny nodded. "Yeah, I kind of noticed that. He even tried hitting on me once or twice." She almost guffawed with laughter. "And not just at any time – nope, he always did it while I was wearing my kd lang t-shirt, and flashing that little pink triangle button I like to wear sometimes. You know, making it really, truly, stupidly obvious he's really not my type, in every way that really matters – and he still offered to buy me a drink!"
That lifted Rogue's spirits just a little, and she smiled. "Sounds like Remy, all right. I remember he wouldn't leave me alone back when he first wanted us to start datin'. I said no, so he came back stronger. I still said no, so he bought me flowers and offered to take me for boat rides. I finally say yes, and he goes nuts over me." She paused to giggle softly. "And I mean really nuts. Like 'beyond sane' nuts. Guess he really fell hard for me, huh?" She sighed, glancing out of the large sash window that was positioned on the right side of the bed. "I think I was the same about him. I wish I hadn't had to do this." Jenny whistled quietly, before planting a playful momentary kiss on Rogue's scalp and letting a small arc of electricity form between her lips and Rogue's skin for a moment or two, so that she could taste Rogue's aura through it.
"You miss Remy," she said, in a way that suggested she was making a statement, and not asking a question. "Don't you?"
"Yeah, I miss him," Rogue said, slightly guiltily. "I miss him a lot. I was crazy about him for so long; I can't just make those feelings go away. I still feel him right here sometimes… it really hurts." She brushed her sternum, right between her breasts. "Sounds dumb, huh?"
"Sweetie, everybody who's ever been in love feels like that once in a while," Jenny chuckled, trailing her fingers up and down Rogue's arms. "That's all love is, if you really think about it – bottled insanity. If you could figure out a way to sell it, I'd bet you all the gold in Fort Knox that you'd be a billionaire inside of a month."
"I kind of got that impression from everyone else in the mansion," Rogue snorted, slightly more cheerfully. "Warren and Betsy are worse than a Leonardo di Caprio movie sometimes. And don't get me started on our ever-lovin' leader and his wife. God, if I have to hear them making kissy faces at each other one more time…"
Jenny blinked. "They do that?"
"Only when they think nobody else is around." Rogue stretched a little, leaning in more closely to Jenny's body and kissing her briefly on the collar bone, the salty tang of sweat brushing across her lips in the process. "Scott actually thinks singing Barry White songs in that terrible scratchy voice of his is romantic."
"Well, if you sang You're The First, The Last, My Everything to me, I'd be nothing but incredibly flattered," Jenny said, shrugging. "Wouldn't matter at all to me if you couldn't sing." She let a few seconds pass, waiting deliberately for Rogue to rise up in protest, and then continued "Settle down, silly – I know you can sing; after all, I've heard you in the shower. I was just saying that if you couldn't, I still wouldn't care, because I'd know what your meaning was. I guess Jean must feel the same about Scott, especially when he's trying to be romantic."
Rogue lifted her eyebrows briefly and then nodded in agreement. "Yeah, I guess that's right." She paused, a slow smile spreading across her face. "Would you sing for me?"
Jenny blinked. "Only if I was very drunk," she said, kissing Rogue on the lips briefly. "I don't think even love could excuse my singing voice when I'm sober. I've killed cats with it, Lou. You'd think I was punishing you for something, I swear."
"I'm sure I've heard worse," Rogue laughed. "You haven't heard Hank when he's drunk and singing dirty physics equations, after all."
"There are dirty physics equations?" Jenny asked, in a faux-shocked tone. "Really?"
"I guess there must be, or Hank wouldn't sing them." Rogue shrugged. "All it takes is a few glasses of vodka, and you can hear them for yourself."
"A few glasses of vodka? Is that all?" Jenny cocked a neatly-sculpted eyebrow, as if she couldn't believe what she was hearing. "Somehow I thought Hank could take a lot more than that…"
"Who said they were shot glasses, sugar?" Rogue said triumphantly. "Anyway, you don't want to see it. You really don't. Hank's got the worst case of tone-deafness I've ever heard." She paused. "I still want you to sing for me, though." She gave Jenny her most pathetic, sympathy-inducing look, and finally Jenny held her hands up in defeat.
"Okay, okay," she said, helplessly. "But I'm holding you completely responsible for the consequences, all right?"
"Suits me, sugar," Rogue said excitedly. "Better start thinking what you want to sing me – the next karaoke bar we come to, you're getting up there, okay?"
Jenny rolled her eyes. "Now why couldn't I have fallen in love with Storm? At least that way I wouldn't have to put up with this kind of torture." She hugged Rogue a little tighter, and suckled gently on her girlfriend's soft, plump earlobe for a moment or two, in a brief gesture of affection. More sparks crackled and snapped in the air for fractions of a second. "Okay, sweetie. But don't say I didn't warn you."
"'You didn't warn me'," Rogue teased, folding Jenny's arm around her smooth, sweat-caked belly and snuggling even closer to her than she had been before. "Oh, c'mon, you laid yourself open to that one, Jen," she continued, when she observed Jenny's unimpressed expression. "Couldn't resist it."
"So I noticed," Jenny countered, sweeping her free hand through Rogue's long, damp hair as she did so. "You have a cute way with words, you know that? If anybody else had said that to me, I'd probably have called them a smart-ass and zapped them, but you? You just make me want to get my own back on you some other way."
"Oh?" Rogue exclaimed, sounding intrigued. "And what way is that?"
"You'll have to wait and see, won't you?" Jenny chuckled. "If I told you, it wouldn't be a surprise, now would it?"
"I guess not," Rogue said thoughtfully, before she pointed at the rapidly-darkening skies outside the window. "Getting late outside – you wanna go for a drink or something? Maybe we could talk about what we're gonna do tomorrow."
Jenny mulled the suggestion over for a second or two, before she grinned widely and nodded. "Sure, Lou – why not? Maybe we could try finding a karaoke bar, huh?"