The smell of hot dogs -- and a couple of tofu-dogs for the vegetarians in the group -- wafted from the grill, the sound of sizzling nearly lost in the splashes and squeals coming from the pool. Rogue sat by herself at the picnic table, removed from the rest of her teammates in more ways than just the physical, watching everything with an enigmatic smile on her face.

A motion and a rush of air beside her alerted her to the fact that someone had joined her on the bench, and without looking, she recognized Logan. She could never explain it to anyone, but his essence had lingered the longest of any of her absorptions and it always felt a little like being home when he was nearby. In her more whimsical moments, she imagined it was because the piece of him that was trapped in her brain still knew where it belonged, and it wasn’t with her.

She’d borrowed something by accident and ended up stealing it. She wondered if he ever missed that part of himself or if he was aware that it was missing.

He shifted beside her and she flinched, the reaction almost imperceptible. To a mutant with hypersensitive observation skills, she supposed, it was as obvious as if she’d leaped away from him, but true to form, he didn’t comment on it. He lifted his beer to take a swallow, and she glanced over as he set the bottle back down on the table, watching the condensation seep from the glass into the sun-bleached wood, the grain darkening unevenly.

There was something indefinable about him that had never let go of her, more than just the splinter of his personality that was imbedded in her own. Something about the way he moved, or the tension in his jaw when he was wrestling with a problem in his mind, or the rare, surprising full-fledged smiles he sometimes flashed at her or someone else that still made her breath catch in her throat or her mouth go dry.

She hated it with a fierceness that rippled through her as powerfully as his muscles beneath his perfect, unblemished skin. She resented the fact that she could not let go of the feelings that tethered her imagination to him when all hope was gone and she should be moving on. Most days she liked to think she was moving on -- feeling her way along in a relationship with Remy that was twice as serious as she and Bobby had ever thought about being, taking extended leaves from the mansion to live in places she’d always wanted to see, being her own woman in her own world.

But then, without fail, he walked through the door and she felt the tightening in the pit of her stomach, the painful contraction in her throat, the bleak taste of want rolling across her tongue and she knew it wasn’t over. It would never be over.

She knew he knew. There was no way he couldn’t. But he never blinked, never acted as if anything were different, never allowed the knowledge of her attachment to enter his eyes when he looked at her. There was never any sign of awareness from him and it killed her a little bit every time, so she sucked it up and moved on each and every time.

Except she never really moved on at all, and now he was sitting beside her and she knew her skin wasn’t working -- it hadn’t been for the last month -- and the dark, heavy lines of her tattoo running down her arm made her so achingly aware of the proximity of her bare skin to his that she thought she might lose her mind.

Frustrated, she put her hands palm-flat on the table to push herself up and away, and whether it was happenstance or intentional, his hand slipped from his bottle of beer and landed on the back of hers before she could finish the motion. She froze instantly, the sharp contrast between the cold but rapidly warming water beneath her palm and the smooth, dry heat of his fingers on top of hers burning into her consciousness like an iron brand.

She felt every change in her body, knew he could hear, smell, and feel the shifting of her breath, her chemistry, her pulse... but he didn’t move his hand. She closed her eyes and tried to breathe, but all she could do was pray silently, Don’t move, don’t move, don’t move, please don’t move...

Every muscle in her body buzzed with alertness, adrenaline rushing through her like a drug, and as the seconds ticked by she felt herself slowly being seduced by the simple touch of skin-on-skin, felt all the protective sheets she’d sewn around her heart rapidly coming unraveled, and it wasn’t until she began to feel dizzy that she realized she was holding her breath.

She heard her name called from the pool, her eyes flying open to see Remy coming toward her, and tried desperately to remember how to speak. Logan’s hand moved from hers so casually it might never have been there in the first place, returning to his bottle which he turned up for another swallow.

“Rogue! C’mon, chere, it is de last day of summer before de pool closes! You want to swim, don’ you?”

Marie cleared her throat and made a stumbling response that passed for “Yeah, in a minute,” and turned to look at Logan, but he’d slipped away as quietly as he’d come, and no matter how she twisted, her hair flying as she whipped her head around to look for him, he was nowhere to be seen.

Shaken and unsettled, she fought for composure as she stood from the picnic table, pulling her tank top over her head and slipping out of her cut-off shorts to reveal the bikini that she wore underneath. Blinking back tears and ignoring the tremble in her legs as she walked toward the pool, she tucked the memory away in her mind and unconsciously rubbed the back of her hand. When she dove under the water, she pushed her breath out of her lungs with a vengeance, imagining that she was expelling the effect he’d had on her and knowing that as soon as she resurfaced she’d only draw it in again.

It would never be over. Not for her.

The End