Humanity didn't have enough respect for its sense of smell. Of all the five senses, it was by far the most overlooked and the most taken for granted.

Marie respected it; she had been exposed to the true power of the sense of smell. The world always seemed…crisper…after a brush with Logan's skin.

Sitting on the rooftop of Xavier's School for the Gifted, she closed her eyes in the summer heat and reflected on the world around her, no extra gifts boosting her normal sensory perception.

Her skin was slicked with perspiration from sitting in the sun on the blackened roof, and it was no wonder that one of the first smells she digested was her own. It sounded weird, but she had always liked the way that she smelled, even before she had Logan rumbling around in her head with his own perceptions to contribute. Her scent mingled with the heady, thick smell of the warm tar on the roof.

She raised the beer that had been resting in her lap to her lips and briefly focused on the sweet and sour smell of the Bass Ale in her hand.

Expanding her sphere of influence, she could almost taste the verdant brightness of the recently cut grass below. The forest beyond was a mass of dichotomies – the pungent twang of evergreen, the dry earthiness broadleaf trees, the moist mossy ground coverings… She stayed there, letting it surround her and flow through her.

After a few minutes her eyes flickered open, moving to the forest in the distance. Surely that was her imagination – it was really too far to smell without enhanced senses.

She shook her head to clear what she assumed was the haze of alcohol and moved to stand, brushing a fine layer of gravel from her backside as she did. And turned to leave, running almost directly into Logan.

That smell!

"You goin' somewhere, darlin'?" he asked lazily from where he was leaned against the gabled window. His hand reached out to steady her as she regained her balance from the shock of discovering she wasn't alone.

"Just inside… I didn't hear you come out?" she stated, simultaneously asking a question.

"I just walked out a few minutes ago. Didn't want to interrupt… whatever it was you were doing." A half-smile creeped across his face, and Marie could only imagine what she must have looked like.

"I was smelling," she began defensively, already feeling silly.

"Smelling?" A confused look glazed his face, and he sniffed the air carefully. "You smell fine to me."

"No silly," Marie laughed. "Not `being' smelly; I was smelling. You know, using my nose?"

"Oh." He paused, and then looked up at her, his eyes crinkling around the edges the way that he did when he thought something was funny but wouldn't laugh outloud. "You have to consciously think about smelling? And you do it like that?"

"Well, yeah," she responded. "Not everyone has the senses that you do. Most people rely on their sight primarily, and their hearing and touch secondarily. Taste and smell usually are only involved when food is." She paused. "Why? What did I look like?"

Logan grunted, taking the near-empty beer from Marie's hand and finishing it off. "Like a woman being touched by her lover." He looked up and met her eyes, unreadable emotion flickering through his own.

Marie processed this through her mind, blushing at the memory of the scent of what she had thought was the forest in the distance, realizing it had been Logan all along. She smiled, curiosity overtaking her. "Logan, what do I smell like to you?"

He gave her a funny look. "You smell like Marie. What, you want a hundred word essay or something?"

She smiled teasingly. "You have a hundred words about the way I smell?"

He seemed to be seriously contemplating the request. "I don't know if I have that many," he began. "You're…fresh, like early spring when the flowers are just breaking through the snow. Warm and a little spicy, like that chai tea they serve in the Himalayas. A little tart, like an early blackberry." He paused, realizing he was easily denting the one hundred word 'requirement', and suddenly broke off, looking down. His free hand found its way into his pocket while the other knocked the empty beer bottle against his thigh.

His eyes slowly moved back up – and if Marie didn't know better she'd swear he was almost blushing – and he looked at her from under his eyebrows. "Something like that, I guess," he finished a little lamely.

"You seem like you've given this some thought," she said, trying to hold back a grin.

"Whatever, Marie." He put his hand at the small of her back, subconsciously urging her back through the window and into the mansion.

He didn't, she pointedly observed as she climbed through, deny her remark.

Walking down the hall next to Logan, she playfully wrapped an arm around his waist and leaned into the crook of his arm, inhaling deeply. Smelling.