Aha! I have returned! Thanks to IsForWinners who helped me resurrect my very very dead humour muse. Jesus has nothing on that girl. LOVE YOU CABBAGE!

PART II

. . .

"Take off your jumper."

In all her life, Rogue never imagined she would willingly remove her clothing for John Allerdyce. Just no. Just eww.

But her jumper lay there, abandoned on the floor like some old skin, shed, pure concentrate evidence – well, 72% cotton, actually, but beggars can't be choosers, right? Either way, jumper on the floor. Rogue not on the floor.

For documentation purposes, it had gone down a bit like this:

"What are ya doin'?" Rogue asked, a little more than cautiously, as John shrugged off his hoodie. Underneath he wore a dark grey long-sleeved t-shirt (90% cotton), the kind that makes you wish it was just a leeeeetle bit tighter, if you know what I mean. Rogue panicked. Was this some sort of signal? The new yawn-and-reach? Did he expect her to copy him? Was it a game? Would they keep doing it until there was nothing left? And why was she so bothered by it? In the immediate aftermath of the Cure she had shamelessly strutted her stuff in the shortest skirt she owned (which, in fairness now, wasn't actually that short) and a tank top despite the near freezing weather. So why the total spaz attack?

Hamlet, he had it easy. To strip or not to strip, that is the question.

"Why are ya stripping?"

"Stripping?" John repeated. He had the audacity to sound completely innocent to all ulterior motives. "What you talking about?"

"I'm talkin' about ya takin' off all ya clothes and expectin' me to do the same. 'Cause I won't. No way." Rogue shook her head firmly, arms folded tight across her chest.

John raised an eyebrow.

"Stripping?" With one simple work he made her feel five-years-old. Her arms feel limply to her sides. "Why, Roguey, if I had known– "

Rogue cut him off, her face scarlet. "Well?" she demanded. "If ya weren't strippin' what were ya doin'?" Eyebrow still raised John surveyed her for a long, long moment (a long one) and Rogue felt her cheeks burn like beacons, stop signs through the city smog, but she determinedly held his gaze. "Well?"

"I took it off so the sleeves wouldn't catch in the sugar. Knock it over ... I could put it back on. If it bothers you that much," he added, smirking. Smug bastard.

"Bothered?" Rogue snorted, recovering, and fighting hard not to blush. "Don't flatter yahrself sugah."

"Wouldn't dream of it."

"Oh yeah?"

"I've got better things to dream about."

Rogue swallowed.

Triumphant, John returned to his calculations, counting on his fingers, bless his cotton (54%) socks. Rogue hung back, reluctant to part with her hoodie. Underneath it all she had was a skimpy tank top. "Ya know what? I think you've got this bit covered. I'll – um – stand here awhile. See how it's done. Yeah, ya know, watch and, eh, learn."

And admire you from behind.

Kinda funny, that. Because she was admiring his behind.

"Admire my what?"

Oh God! Had she said that out loud? FUDGE!

"Fudge?"

Shit! Had she said that out loud too?

"Nuthin'," Rogue declared mulishly, glaring with avid determination at a scorch mark on the wall three inches to the left of John's face. "I said nuthin', all right?"

John smirked. "You sure?" he pressed her, all smiles and halos and chalky fingers.

"Yep."

"Because I'm sure I heard something about you admiring– "

"Well ya must have been imagining it," Rogue snapped. Flicking her hair over her shoulder, she continued on in an air of patronising superiority that she just knew would annoy him, "Sometimes, John, when ya want to hear somethin' bad enough, ya brain makes ya think ya did."

John shrugged indifferently and turned back to the skeleton sugar pyramid, but not before Rogue caught a glimpse of his cheeks – slightly pinker than usual? A blush? Had John Allerdyce, had Pyro, just blushed? Over something little ol' Rogue had said? She had to be hallucinating. She wondered if she should turn herself over to Hank before things got any worse. If she was seeing Pyro blush at something she said then it was time to call it a day.

But if she was only hallucinating than why did she feel all warm and fluffy inside?

"You going to help or what?" John's irritable voice brought Rogue back to earth with an unpleasant bump. Definitely, hallucinating. As she had said, if you want something bad enough, your brain will conjure it for you.

But why did she want to see John blush? Like, hello Mr. Subconscious? WTF?

Rogue sighed and knelt down beside him. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. She resolutely kept her sweater on, though, and made a show of rolling up her sleeves in compromise. It was an old sweatshirt of Piotr's, thus about ten of her could fit inside it comfortably, and, unrolled, the sleeves hung to about her knees. With about two-thirds of the sleeve bunched around her elbow, gravity was a bitch. They always fell back down, she knew from experience.

But John didn't need to know that.

"Okay." He said back on his heels, hands on his knees. "I've done the maths." Rogue thought it was so cute the way he said maths the wrong way, with a 's'. Stupid Australians (haha LOL!). "And, taking into account that each cube is roughly a centimetre squared, if we want this to be big we need a base of ten to the ..." And he started speaking fluent math. It was like a chicken started reciting Proust. In French. Whilst juggling sixteen firebrands. Standing on one leg. On the back of a dragon. Orbiting Uranus.

"Ya have done the math."

"Contrary to popular belief, yes, I can add," John retorted scathingly, none too impressed.

"Ah nevah said ya couldn't," Rogue said defensively.

"It was implied."

"Was not."

"Was too."

"Was not."

"You can't lie for shit, Rogue, you know that?"

Rogue glowered. "I wasn't lyin' for shit, for yahr information. I was lyin' fohr ya. I hurt ya'll feelings and I wanted to make it up to ya. Well, excusez moi for bein' nice. Jeez, PMS much?"

John blinked.

"You're excused. As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, we need a base of ..."

Rogue stared at him. Asshole. How could he just blithely carry on? Insensitive prick. Deciding the sugar's need was greater than his, she got to her feet and flounced across the room. Stacked not so neatly on John's bed was at least fifty boxes of standard white sugar cubes. "Where did you get all this shit?" John had asked, a little overwhelmed when she returned with her wares (transported in an old wheelbarrow of Storm's, ingenious, she knew). "Scott's class," she had answered promptly, tossing a few boxes onto John's bed.

John did not look happy.

"No! Don't put them there retard!"

"Why not? Where else we gonna put 'em?"

"How about nowhere?"

Rogue unloaded the barrow over the bedspread. "Very funny."

John stared at his bed in obvious dismay, trying very much to take it like a man. "And why ... why did Summers have boxes of sugar in the first place?"

"Social studies project. Kids were supposed to be makin' buildings from them but they ate 'em instead."

John had visibly shuddered.

Now Rogue picked up the topmost box and idly upended it over John's pillow, taking particular care to make sure all the dust made the journey from box to bed. She watched as he scrabbled about on his knees, marking out the pyramid's base with chalk (also liberated from Scott). She could see his shoulder blades contract through the light material of his t-shirt. Strong. Capable.

She imagined what they might look like ... sans t-shirt.

Trail her fingers down his spine, hold ice cubes up to the hollow and watch them melt against hot skin, water and sweat tickling down between those shoulder blades.

Sweat?

She was fantasising about John Allerdyce's sweat. It was like the world had done a complete one-eighty, and up was now down, black was white, chalk was cheese, and psychotic was, well … sexy.

Rogue clapped a hand to her forehead feeling for a temperature. Surely she had a fever to accompany the delusions. Swine flu, maybe? Mad Cow Disease? AIDs? Pyroitis? She was sure she couldn't feel her toes any more. Was it fatal? She didn't want to die, not here, not now, not a virgin on John Allerdyce's skanky, sugar-covered bedroom floor.

"Rogue? What, in the name of God, are you doing?"

"Eh?"

Rogue's brain jammed. Quickly she dropped her hands while simultaneously reaching to fix her hair. She had been aiming at discretion but the overall effect was one of a rather dim orangutan.

John snickered.

Rogue glared daggers at him. "And ya would know about all thangs holy, wouldn't ya, St. John?"

"It's pronounced sinjun," John corrected, scowling.

Sinjun.

Oh. Unexpected.

"Must be annoying when people are always gettin' yahr name wrong," Rogue said lamely, hoping that by speaking her brain might be distracted.

John merely grunted in reply and grabbed a box of sugar that had fallen off the bed. With clever brown fingers, he laid down the first cube. A momentous moment. He continued all around the chalk perimeter. The shoulder blades contracted and smoothened. As he leaned over to reach the far side, she could see a sliver of golden skin at the base of his spine, just a crack.

Crack.

Rogue brayed with laughter, sounding rather like a donkey wearing a snorkel. John gave her one, long, slow look over his shoulder. She fell silent instantly. Picked up a handful of sugar cubes.

"You gonna help or what?" he demanded. "Anytime time this century is great."

Somehow, there was sugar in his hair.

Pulled as by a magnet, attracted, as they say in physical – physics. Physics – Rogue drifted across the room to him. "Stay still," she ordered, laying her hands on his head. John tensed. Shoulder blades tightened.

With wary eyes, he asked, "Why?"

"Ya got sugar in yahr hair," Rogue teased in what she considered a placating voice. John, if possible, looked warier still. A frown creased above navy eyes.

"So?"

"So stay still so I can get it out, stupid. Yah're such a tool, Johnny." And she reached out to his head–

John's hand came snapping up to throw hers off course. He caught her hand. For a moment they hung suspended in the air before drifting back down as the laws of gravity tend to prescribe. Inconsiderate fuckers. Almost as an afterthought, some kind of justification for this PDA, this whatever, he said, "I can do it."

"I know that," Rogue agreed. "But I want to."

"What else do you want to do?"

"This."

Crushing the sugar clenched in her fist, she pulled back his t-shirt and emptied her fist down his back.

John screamed. Screamed, but in a manly way … if that was possible. Rogue wasn't so sure but she didn't exactly have time to reflect on the matter before all the breath was smacked from her body. Like some sugar-crazed jack-in-the-box/ninja hybrid, John had mercilessly rugby-tackled her, moving faster than was fair. Rogue let out a strangled yell as they both crashed sideways on to the bed. In hopeless self-defence, she grabbed tight to his hands, screaming and wriggling beneath him, trying to keep clever brown (from her eyes, throat and various other delicates whose faculty she would probably require in the future – like her head. In general). Somewhere in the fighting, the yells turned to laughter and they rolled off the bed onto the floor with a loud thump, sugar boxes raining down on them. Rogue collapsed, her ribs aching, spasming on the carpet, breathless, blinded by tears. John, possessed, broke free of her grip and lunged forward, snatching up a handful of sugar cubes.

And that's when Rogue knew she was, in a word, fucked.

John straddled her, grinning like a mad thing. His hand, bulging with sugar, was getting far too close to her mouth. She struggled in vain and he caught her arms with his free hand, pinning them down above her head.

"Prepare to eat sugar, nerd."

This was it. The end. In slow-mo, Rogue watched her own doom, death by sugar, coming down the track. Without her powers, in John's eyes she was defenceless. But he had forgot her secret weapon. Mutant or not, Rogue was still a girl.

His hand, lepered with sugar, was millimetres away...

And she licked it. Gave his fingers a big, wet lick. John yelped in surprise and dropped his load, pun most definitely intended. Pulling her hands free, Rogue rose up off the ground, propped up on her elbow. Sugar covered her chest, covered John's fingers. It would be a shame to let it go to waste.

Slowly, she licked his baby finger clean. And his ring finger.

"Rogue? ROGUE! I know you're in there! Piotr said you'd be hiding down here! Come out and take it like a ma– "

Jubilee stood in the doorway, her eyes so wide her mud mask had cracked.

"Oh."

"Fudge."

"Oh!"

"For fuck's sake."

"OH! ... KITTY!"

I know I haven't updated this in years, but was reading over old stuff and got bitten by the Ryro bug! ARGH! Hopefully there are still peeps out there, in hibernation or hiding out in nuclear bunkers twenty miles below sea level! So calling all RYROERS! Your ship needs you!

Thanks, Plonksie