Crush
by
Elizabeth Wilde


DISCLAIMER: I do not own any of these characters. They are all copyright... Marvel and/or Twentieth Century Fox and possibly even other places or people. Point is, not mine. I make no money from this site and I don't have any to give, so there's no point in suing.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I issued a challenge to use the lyrics to the song "Crush" by Jennifer Paige on a couple of lists, then couldn't resist answering it myself

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I see ya blowin' me a kiss
It doesn't take a scientist
To understand what's going on, baby.
If you see something in my eye,
Let's not over analyze
Don't go too deep with it, baby.

I've been back for almost a week now, and it's gettin' pretty hard to ignore the fact that Rogue's got a crush on me. It's not that I didn't notice it before I left--hell, even if I hadn't, Jean flat-out told me--but absence really does make the heart grow fonder. I catch her, ya know, starin' at me a lot.

The thing that gets me is that I can't look at her the same way as before either. She's almost twenty now, and I keep callin' her "kid." She cringes every time I do it, and I still can't seem to stop. It's like if I stop calling her one, she'll stop being one. Which is stupid, since it's obvious to anyone with eyes in their head that she ain't anymore.

And I can't keep from noticin' that she's got curves most women would die to have and most men would die to explore. Not my fault she got prettier every damn day I was gone. I think the stupidest I've ever felt in my whole life was when she caught me starin' down her blouse when she bent over to pick up her books in Chuck's office one day. First time I can remember blushing. Ever. Turned beet red for the next hour. She just smiled at me.

It's raising my adrenaline
You're banging on a heart of tin
Please don't make too much of it, baby.
You say the word "forevermore"
That's not what I'm looking for
All I can commit to is "maybe."

She's startin' to get tired of waiting for me to make a move. It's been a couple of months. My little Rogue's gotten quite the temper with her new powers. I teased her about something or another the other day and landed a punch that would've sent any of the other guys around to the infirmary with a broken jaw. Would've been worth it to see that spark in her eyes.

Dammit! I keep doing that. I need to stop thinking about her like she's somebody I can look at like that. She isn't. She's Marie. She's a cute little kid I picked up at a bar in Canada. That didn't quite come out right. Point is, she's just a kid. A kid with shining hair, gorgeous eyes, legs that go all the way... Dammit!

The other day she actually asked me if I wanted to have dinner alone sometime. In her room. You would've needed a spatula to scrape my jaw up off the floor. I told her maybe sometime and then got the hell out of the living room. I didn't go back in there for a solid week.

Next time I ran into her was outside. She'd been walkin' with Bobby and Kitty and some other girl whose name I never learned. The second she spotted me, she was running up the path. I'm not even gonna tell you how nice that runnin' was, especially knowin' it was just for me.

But she's just a kid, and nothin' can happen. Even if I look at her sometimes now and see this sorta sad look on her face. Even when I know I'm the reason it's there.

It's just a little crush (crush)
Not like I faint every time we touch.
It's just some little thing (crush)
Not like everything I do depends on you.

There's more than just the age to worry about. Rogue--she told me to stop calling her Marie, said she left Marie back in the south--wants things with us that just can't happen. No matter how much either one of us wants 'em to. It wouldn't be fair to give 'er hope and then have her be that much closer to everything she can't have. It isn't fair. Not fair at all.

I told her it's just friends with us. She understands and all, but I caught a little bit of that anger flickerin' in her eyes. She thinks it's just because I can't touch her. And maybe it is. Sometimes I wanna touch her more than anything in the world, and not in a sick way either. I mean just brushing her hair off her cheek or holding her hand without gloves. She deserves that much, and I can't give it to her.

As if she's gonna buy, "It's not you, it's me."

Nobody buys that, especially not someone like Rogue. Not that I know what she's like yet.

I understood Marie. I'm not sure I understand Rogue yet. But there's time.



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