A/N: Another one inspired by a song. Again, kind of strange in its execution. The song is, "This Side of Me" by Savage Garden. The title and one or two lines of the dialogue are inspired by it. I'll tell you which in the bottom A/N.

Warning: There are some mature insinuations in this, but as anyone who knows my writing might guess, it's nothing graphic.

Thanks: I'm amazed at you guys that continue reading and reviewing these Echoes. Seriously. Kudos to y'all. Absentia read this one and helped title it, too, but any grammar/spelling errors are entirely my own. I was too eager to get it out to send it through the proper beta-channels.

Question: Are you guys following my 'emsscraps'? I always put up my Review Responses onto there, so if you wonder why I've never replied to a review you've left and you haven't been onto there, that might be why. I never leave a reviewer behind! I swear. You don't have to have an LJ account to see the journals, either, so go on over. Nothing to fear, I swear!

Just
(19: Please Forget About Me)
By Em

"I can't stop when it comes to you."
- Vow, Garbage

"I wasn't born to lose you…"
- I Want You, Bob Dylan

She gasped his name and he smiled against the skin of her neck. "Say it again."

She shivered as she felt the rumble of his voice reverberate on her flesh like a note on a string. "Robin," she breathed.

He could feel her fingers dig into the backs of his shoulder blades. "No one but you calls me that anymore," he said, his words interspersed with kisses, his breath caressing first the side of her jaw, next the space behind her ear, then her lobe.

"You'll always be Robin to me," she answered, breathless.

It was as if he had been waiting for those words from her for years and the choice she made to give him that recognition -- that admission -- went through him like a balm. He stopped for a moment, eyes closed and breath ragged. It was still there, that ever-present need he was overwhelmed by when he wasn't careful, when something unexpectedly reminded him of her all those years they were apart, or if they accidentally touched in the odd moments they met. It was still there, but in the moment that proceeded the knowledge that she thought of him too, that what they once felt so clearly between them hadn't faded, that he was still Robin to her, he could think again. Merely this satisfied the need of her; holding her and feeling her pulse beat against him, the warmth of her soft skin against his lips, even if they were still. He inhaled deeply of her and felt calm and complete and whole, even as he knew this was only a temporary reprieve and it would never be enough, he closed his eyes and simply was there with her.

He felt her hands slip from his shoulders and then they were on his face, her lithe, nimble fingers touching his jaw, tracing the outline of his cheekbone. She didn't say a word, but he opened his eyes to meet her gaze regardless. They spoke volumes in the silence, the way they always had been able to, and she let him see how much she wanted him as with the same look she reminded him how impossible it was between them.

She touched him softly one last time and started to pull away, but he wouldn't give way. His gaze hardened into determined lines.

"Robin," she said again, this time her tone controlled. "You know we can't."

He looked at her and kissed her lips, pressing her against him, fitting every curve of her body against his. Instead of resisting, she responded to his urgency and his need, for what seemed like a lifetime, and wasn't nearly enough. She broke the kiss, but before she could speak, he did. "I don't care."

She hid her eyes from him, knowing they would give her away and belie whatever she was planning to say. The words they both knew she had to say. "You have to."

Her words gave him pause – and he leaned them both against the wall at her back. Her palms flat against his chest where she had intended to keep him at a distance did not resist as he rested against her, his arms bracing his weight on the wall on either side of her head. "Why?" he whispered, not sure she heard him, even if he spoke the words almost right next to the perfect shell of her ear.

He heard her sharp intake of breath as he banged his fist against the wall, but still, she didn't move, didn't try to get away from him. "Why do we always have to deny ourselves?" he demanded, his voice stronger, the anger he always, always, pushed back and away from him thickening his voice and sharpening his tone.

He leaned back only enough to search her eyes. "Why not us?" She was not fooled by his anger. She could see the despair in the depths of his eyes.

A despair mirrored as resigned sadness in her own.

He could see her searching for the way to put in words what neither of them really wanted to face. "It's just the hand we've been dealt," she finally decided.

When he could not argue and simply stared at her in powerless anger, she pushed them off the wall. "Please," she said, the word alien in her usually steady voice as she started to move passed him, expecting him to give way the way he really should. "just forget about me."

He didn't. He couldn't. "I won't," he vowed.

One hand cupping her cheek, he pulled her back to him, capturing her lips in another kiss so gentle and probing, so loving she couldn't resist or pull away.

When they finally broke apart, her voice was choked and breathless as she whispered a helpless, "Robin…" into his ear and his hands traced circles along her spine. He felt the constriction in her throat as she swallowed, felt the weight of the words even before she spoke them, the tears she would never let herself cry. "You have to let me go," she said softly, something too much like pleading in the timbre of the words.

"One time," Robin whispered into her hair. They'd found each other again after all this time, without planning or reason, and he couldn't just let her go. He refused. "Just this one time…" he repeated, one hand pressing flush on her back while the other sought out her arm and traveled lower, tracing the graceful muscles and tendons of her arm until he found the soft pad of her palm, his fingers lingering over the center for a moment before stretching out to lay flush against each of her fingers. "Just this one time let me feel your hand in mine." She opened her hand and he laced his fingers with hers, raising both their hands between them, pressing a kiss to each digit tenderly. "Just this one time," he repeated, as if it were his mantra. "Just tonight…" he looked at her, searched her face, noted the brightness of tears turning her eyes deep purple, "…let me wear the scent of you…"

Then he kissed her, his lips tenderly taking from her lips her acquiescence, her surrender.

"Just this one time…" his free hand took the lone hand still pressing against his chest, the only thing keeping the distance between them and he took it in his, lifting both her hands to press into the wall at her sides. "Let me do what we both want to…" he murmured against her lips.

"Robin," she spoke, breathing in his breath.

"Say yes," he insisted, his body so close to her, his lips toying with hers. "Raven," he breathed. "Just tonight…"

He felt it in her body the moment before the word even left her lips.

"Yes."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

A/N: This just felt very sensory to me, and I wanted to keep it down on the dialogue and every word said is something that I could really 'hear' in the scene, if that makes sense. I'm sorry for not explaining why they can't be together, but I'll leave that up to your imagination.

The songs that inspired this are primarily, as I said above, "This Side of Me" by Savage Garden. The lines I paraphrased are:

"This one time let my body do what it feels…"

"I want to feel your hand in mine…"

"I want to wear the scent of you / and do all the things you want me to…"

Initially, I put that song on repeat to write this whole one-shot. Then, after I wrote it, when I went back to tweak it, I was listening to that song as well as:

"I Want You" by Elvis Costello

"Summertime" by Ella Fitzgerald

"Body and Soul" by Diana Krall

"Ne Me Quitte Pas" by Nina Simone

"The Thrill is Gone" by Nina Simone

and

"Abandoned Masquerade" by Diana Krall