Emma Frost is tired of trying to be good (ice_queen) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2013-07-06 09:18:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, !trigger warning, emma frost (white queen), scott summers (cyclops) |
Who: Emma and Scott
What: talking in bed
When: 7/4
Where: their bedroom
Rating: R for handwaved sexytime and frank discussion of nightmares and depression
Status: complete
Emma was still pretty wound up from the day. Now that she was feeling things again she was feeling them very violently. She paced the bathroom while she waited for the water to heat up, and her shower was shorter than it had ever been before. She was being short with everyone unless she paused long enough to calm herself down, and the more she did it the more effort it took. In hindsight it would be relieving, but right now she was nothing but pissed about her life and how it had played out over the last couple weeks.
She tugged on her pajamas and slid into bed, her grumbling and complaining turning into silent sulking while Scott finished getting ready for bed as well.
Scott sat down behind her and rubbed at her shoulders. He didn’t say anything, simply tried to work the tension out of her body, and leaning in to kiss the back of her neck.
Emma relaxed by degrees. She loved to have her back rubbed, and Scott had gotten pretty good at it over the course of their relationship. The kiss on the back of her neck tickled, an drew a small laugh out of her. She turned to face him, her expression more calm. “Mmmm, thank you. I thought I got all my frustrations out on the zombies. Apparently I did not.” She wrapped her arm around his waist. “It’s a good thing I don’t have the power to hit people through the Internet.”
He chuckled. “Well you’re not Douglas Ramsey, who could probably literally do it, or Forge, who could create a machine to do it, or Kitty who could program their computer to do it. It would be a nice trick.”
Emma laughed. It felt nice. “I’ll have to ask Kitty if that’s possible.” She sighed softly, closing her eyes. “If it’s not one thing it’s another, or it’s all the things at once.” She was safe here. “Thank you for putting up with me while I was dealing with things. Apparently I’m still prone to moping, and you’ve been a wonderful help.”
He kissed her shoulder, then her ear. “Anything you want to talk about?”
The kisses were very nice. She gently pushed his chin until she could kiss him properly. It was a brief kiss, but enough to make her feel warmer. After her capture and death she hadn’t been feeling like herself at all, and her time with Scott had suffered a little as well. “Being in a situation where I had no ability to save myself or the people around me was very difficult. I think I’m more upset about that than the fact that I died.”
“As much as we’d like to think, we aren’t really as prepared as we want to be.” Scott thought that came from a desire to try to be normal, as much as anything else. You couldn’t straddle that line between being normal and being ready, without sacrificing a little of each.
She nodded. “Yeah. I got a little overconfident.” It bothered her that assuming she wouldn’t need to be able to run very fast or fight ten armed people with her bare hands was a mistake. “I don’t know what the answer is. Clearly we can’t have both, but when we try to be prepared for everything it leaves us sitting on the wreckage of Asteroid M ten miles offshore from San Francisco at war with the whole world.” Her hand slowly stroked his low back and hip, just enjoying the contact for now. Now that she wasn’t angry she was pretty tired.
“Not a place I want to be,” Scott agreed. Trying to run a nation was a pain in the ass, and not an experience he wanted to go through in this life. He leaned into her touch. “Nor up in Orbit.”
“No, I like things here.” The way his hip moved under her hand and against her leg was delicious. “We’ll just have to be more careful.” She slid her nails over the back of his boxers, dragging them down over the curve of his butt. “How have you been feeling? I know I was emotionally absent for a week, and I’m sorry about that.”
Scott groaned, her touch having an obvious effect on him. He put his arm around her and gave her a long, lingering kiss. “Distracted. Worried. Tense.”
His groan made her shiver. It occurred to her that the last time they’d had sex was before the Cerebus thing. No wonder she’d been so short tempered. The kiss was nice, she slid her leg over Scott’s hip, pressing her body against his a little more. “Are things okay at the Ranch? If I’m not going to hide with my father, and we can’t locate where the damn things are coming from, we might as well help keep the kids safe and free Shepard up to be more active.”
“Wrex has most of it handled. Between him and Shepard I’m not needed as much.” He trailed his hand over her shoulder, then then into her hair.
She moaned softly. “I guess we should make a plan for tomorrow, then.” She tugged his boxers down a little. Her tiredness was becoming less important as the conversation wore on.
Scott’s breath hitched. “Plans for tomorrow?” His brain was a little distracted, and his eyes followed Emma’s face behind his glasses.
“They were important, for some reason.” She noted, pulling back enough to wiggle out of her tank top. She’d have to unwrap her leg to get her shorts off, and she wasn’t sure she was ready to lose that contact, yet. “We were going to do something important.”
“We can remember what they were later,” Scott replied. He wanted to reaffirm life, with his wife.
Emma was pleased to enjoy the perks of feeling emotions again. Pleasure and love were a nice change from anger and irritation.
She held him close after they finished. It felt so good to be with him again. How had she neglected this for more than a week? “God, I love you.”
“I love you too, Emma...” Scott was the pleasant sort of worn out, and a little emotionally raw. It had felt like his heart was burning when he’d made love to her. He’d come so close to losing her.
She heard that rawness in his voice. It made her stomach twist. “Dani told me some things about how life was the last time she was here.” She couldn’t help but worry about Scott. She knew how hard her own demons were to contain, sometimes. How easy and seductive it was to give in to self-loathing.
He chuckled. “About as traumatic, really. If you stop and think about it.” He stroked his fingers down Emma’s face.
“I got that impression.” She kissed him again, a soft, lingering kiss. She was certain she’d never be able to kiss him enough. Her expression was a little more serious when it broke. “She said you almost shot yourself.”
“Oh.” That. Scott shrugged a shoulder. “Dani’s powers kicked in.”
It took Emma a second to even remember what Dani’s powers were, beside the arrows. She made a face. “Would it bother you if I asked what you saw?”
“A little bit. But I should tell you. Tell someone.” He hadn’t. Not to anyone.
She stroked his back softly. “It doesn’t have to be right now, of course. I won’t blame you for wanting to save that conversation for morning.” She could understand why he wouldn’t want to talk about it. She didn’t even know what her own worst fear was.
“No, I should probably talk about it...” He rubbed at his temple as he dug around in the back of his mind, searching for that terrible memory. Dani had shown him all of his worse fears. There’d been no one left but him.
Emma nodded, her arm wrapping around him a little tighter. She waited for him to describe it. Part of dealing with things was finding the words to describe them.
Scott took a breath, thinking back to that day. "Shepard and I were both there. We got lost in our own fears. I saw...I saw your blood on my hands. And all around me was ...everyone. Everyone I ever dreamed about, taught, cared for, loved. It was a massacre. I was the last mutant left."
Emma saw it in his mind, the way he’d seen it that day. Her chest tightened, but not for her own sake. She wasn’t bothered by images of her own death at the moment. It was the pain she felt in him that got to her. “I can see why you reacted as you did.” She kissed his forehead. “That’s a horrible thing to see, especially when you weren’t expecting it.”
“Dani saved my life.” He didn’t really blame her. You couldn’t control your powers. He supposed even Shepard had forgiven her eventually. He hoped.
Emma nodded. “She was very upset about it. I guess something like that would be hard to forget.” She stroked his hair. “I’m glad I missed that particular adventure, but I’m sorry I wasn’t there to help.”
“Not sure it wouldn’t have made things worse, really. But...it’s in the past and we need to look forward. At least I know what it would take to push me to that.” Complete, and utter despair.
She nodded. “Yes, and now I remember why plans for tomorrow are so important. We marked the areas we cleared, we’ll need to check in with the other teams to see where they’ve already checked. I’m sure no one’s found the spawn point, yet. We’d have heard about it.”
“Yeah, and few people know how these things even come about.” If Shepard had found those ‘dragon’s teeth’ she’d mentioned, she would have said something, he was sure of it.
“I assume we’d know it when we saw it.” Emma noted, making a face. “If Shepard had any information I’m sure she’d share it. She wants these things gone more than we do, or so it seems.”
“She’s seen them up close and personal...and so have I. When Dani took me out of my fear, we could see hers. All her crew, her friends, people we know...turned into those husks, or worse, and all around us the city turned to ash.” He shuddered.
Emma nodded, stroking his back again. “Yeah. We won’t let that happen.” Her voice was certain. She was certain. They would win. There was no other option.
“We won’t,” Scott agreed. “We’ll win.” There was no other option.