Unlike some people I'm not a mind reader.
Who: Scott Summers, Emma Frost What: A genuine date, discussing dream things, guilt When: Recent Where: a coffee shop
All things considered, Emma wasn’t really sure about this ‘dating Scott Summers’ plan. Their first date had gone smoothly enough, so long as neither of them brought up any awkward topics of conversation. It felt like they were walking on eggshells around each other, and she wasn’t sure which one of them was the most afraid of bringing things up.
Probably, it was her. She didn’t like talking about her life, or the circumstances she’d ended up in. She didn’t want to mention how low she’d fallen - mentally and emotionally, not just financially. And she still wasn’t sure that she didn’t just want to push him away.
But here she was, sitting in a cozy coffee shop in Lake Forest. She’d opted for a pair of black pants instead of the jeans she’d been wearing lately, and chose a combination of white tank top with a pull over sweater. The material of the sweater was light and delicate, and seemed to be shot through with golden threads. Her hair was back and she looked somewhat raw, like she’d forgotten to put on makeup.
It was earlier than she liked to be up, but that was for Scott’s benefit. She looked around for the man as she waited in line at the counter. Surely, he’d already shown up and claimed a seat.
Seeing Emma in anything other than white felt wrong to Scott. Even in the dreams. Especially in the dreams But people changed. He’d changed, they’d all changed. He wondered if Emma remembered the Phoenix Five yet. Remembered how he’d stripped her of her powers and broken them all.
He pulled up and walked in, surprisingly being the late one, and stepped behind Emma. “Morning.”
What Emma had and had not dreamed was for Emma alone to deal with, she thought. As far as she was aware, she'd dreamed 'it all', but everything had ended on a note that made her feel like more of the story had yet to unfold. She was happy that her powers hadn't been broken, here.
It was one of the reasons why, though she often had to fight back jealousy, she was happy enough that in this world Rachel was the one holding onto The Phoenix. Even if the other night had proven that her control of the cosmic entity was less than ideal.
She stepped to one side to let Scott stand next to her, and arched a brow, "You're late. How very... unlike you. I take it the house is still in something of a state of chaos?"
“Controlled chaos, but some amount of chaos. I had to drop the kids off at school.” He said it so casually, like that was something he did often. And really, he had been a parent here. He’d gotten to raise a kid and after dreaming some of his dreams he’d never realized how much that meant to him.
"The other two were unavailable for that, or you just like playing at being a grandfather?" Emma asked, arching a brow. If she was concerned about Rachel or Kitty, it didn't sound like it, but that was one of her ways of asking without having to emotionally commit.
She did like the sound of him playing grandfather though, as long as she didn't have to be a grandmother. It made her smile warm up a tad. "I suppose an occasion like this calls for me to get the check. Order whatever you want, darling. My treat."
“A little of both. I wanted to give them some time to sort a few things out.” It felt like Rachel was still mentally raw, for lack of a better term. He didn’t have to walk in tippy toes around her but he figured some headspace couldn’t hurt. He also knew enough not to argue with Emma, so he nodded his head. “Just the occasion to try that buffalo burger.”
"A buffalo burger, at this hour? You do live dangerously." It was too early in the morning for heavy solid foods, as far as Emma was concerned. But she stepped up to the counter and waved a hand at the man taking the orders, "I'll have your largest cappuccino, with white chocolate and raspberry syrups. Go ahead and add on an order of madeleine's, those sound too delicious to ignore. And whatever he's having."
Emma indicated Scott, and pulled out her wallet. Money problems weren't as big of an issue now that she worked for Ganon. She could afford to splurge here and there, and she wanted Scott to know that he didn't always have to pay. Of course, her mother would say that real ladies went for men that got the check. But she couldn't say that she was a 'real' lady anymore, and she wasn't even sure if that was a bad thing.
Scott smirked, “Maybe a buffalo steak and eggs then. I’m not too picky.” It wasn’t that early for him. But then six am wasn’t that early for him. He had a earlier waking hour than even Kitty!
He didn’t mind Emma paying. If she felt she could handle it he wasn’t going to say no.
The order was placed and they were handed a number to take to their table. Emma picked it up and headed into the depths of the cafe, wanting a bit of privacy far away from the bustle of the front area. It wasn't hard to find a good booth. She cheated a bit and selected the one Scott thought was the most defendable.
"Sometimes I look back at us in the dreams and wonder how we ever worked out. You with your early riser complex and me with my love of fluffy blankets and nice sheets to lay on," Emma joked. She slid into her seat with a little more grace than her dream self might have. All of that dancing had really added a polish to her moves and her curves, and she liked showing it off.
“I made sure you had nice sheets,” Scott replied. His eyes followed her from behind his glasses. “And you didn’t mind my morning workout.” If he really let himself acknowledge it, he’d always been attracted to her, even from the beginning. She was, and is, a beautiful woman, and while her methods hadn’t always been the best, she’d had her heart in the right place and she’d been on his side a lot longer than she’d been against him.
"How could anyone mind what that morning workout does for your body?" Emma purred. It was doing amazing things for his body even in this day and age. She cast an approving glance in his direction and smirked a bit, "You were smart enough to know better than to try and drag me off with you, and I always enjoyed how you'd end up returning a few hours later all freshly showered. So that I could dirty you up again."
There'd been plenty of times where Scott had had more than one 'morning workout', and Emma could recall each and every one of them. It made her miss him. Just the physical contact, which she hated to admit she'd gotten used to.
"And you did provide me with excellent sheets, true. It's a shame how messed up it all is, isn't it?"
The dreams had made him more cut, but he hadn’t exactly been out of shape before them. “There were days when I needed two showers, and sometimes a third cold one.”
He missed that. Not just the sex, but the intimacy. In the dreams it seemed like the farthest thing from his experience now. Another thing he’d given up as penance.
Emma understood about penance. She understood it better than most of the X-men did, because in many ways she was still performing her own. Not just for her recent sins, in the dreams, but for the ones that had happened years before, too.
"I never bothered with the cold showers, but that's one of the benefits of being able to turn into a diamond. You never have to feel anything that's inconvenient. You, you just bury it down and then sit on it every chance you get, lock it up in places inside your head to drag back out whenever you feel like hating yourself even more." Her tone was sad, not cold. She understood the workings of his mind like no one else but Jean ever would.
“Well, self-flagellation fell out of style,” he retorted, but there was no malice in his voice. Just acceptance. The conversation was uncomfortable. “I must have turned everything over a thousand times in my head, but I don’t see how it could have happened any differently. And we brought our species back.”
It was, but Emma felt like they were on the topic now and there was no clear way to get out of it. She let out a bit of a sigh, and shook her head, "You can't. There's no point in it, Scott. You do this often and it resolves nothing, because we cannot change the past. And there isn't any way to do it differently and get the same results. Our species is on the rise again and that's worth... You won't convince me that it wasn't worth it. Even if my dream self hates what you did to her. She doesn't hate you. There's a reason she's still there."
“It was worth it. I only wish I hadn’t taken the rest of you down with me.” Scott’s lips turned into a thin line, and he steepled his fingers on the table in front of him. “I really believe that I was right. And that all the things I sacrificed had been for the greater good. It doesn’t mean I don’t regret some of what happened, or what it had done to you and the others. It doesn’t mean I don’t mourn. But it feels like no one gives me that chance.”
"No one's going to give you that chance, Scott. I don't know if you noticed, but our merry little band isn't good at giving people chances. They pretend to; The Mansion's had something of a revolving door policy for quite some time. But some people's pedestals are higher, and yours was an ivory tower." Emma reached her hand across the table, like she was going to take his. But she wasn't sure that's what he needed or if she even wanted to put herself that far out there, and instead she tapped one of her fingers on the table.
"Where IS our food, anyway?"
Their food was arriving just then, big steaming piles of breakfast goodness. Scott’s stomach growled as the food was placed in front of him.
“A tower I fell off, pretty hard.”
"We all fall eventually, darling."
Emma's own 'breakfast' was a gigantic cup of coffee, as big around as a small plate and a good four inches tall. She pulled it closer to her and took a moment to sniff at the contents. The coffee truly smelled amazing, and she was happy that this place knew what it was doing when it came to the barista side of things.
The buffalo steak and eggs, of course, also smelled fantastic. She was slightly jealous of his choices, "I'd know quite a bit about that. And I don't really have anything exhaustingly cheerful to tell you to make it better, either. There are people in our lives that, it seems, are easier to forgive than others."
He cut off a piece and held it up for Emma to take a bite. “It’s just hard, seeing old friends look at you with hatred. And it’s very hard not to blast Bobby through a wall.”
"I think I'm a bit behind you on that front. My last memories involve two Jeans and a migraine, though Bobby was already a whiny little arse at that point. I can't believe I used to find him attractive." She wrinkled her nose a bit, though the disgusted expression changed quickly enough when she got a bite of the food.
It was delicious, and she groaned a bit.
Scott didn’t want to know, he just didn’t want to know. He finally took his first bite of the steak and groaned too. “This. Is much better than thinking about Bobby.”
"That is definitely true," Emma agreed. It wouldn't do to continue mooching off of his plate, however, and she turned her attention back to her gigantic mug of coffee, "I think we need to talk, actually. Not about the dreams, because to be honest I don't think anything about them can really be resolved here. But about something else."
"And what would that something be?" He looked at her from over his orange juice. Because of course he had orange juice. "Unlike some people I'm not a mind reader."
"You've been perfectly good at reading my mind from time to time," Emma corrected, with a bit of a smirk. But she shook her head at herself before her mind filled once again with all of their fun times together, and took a more firm grip of her coffee cup.
It was time to make a confession, she thought. If it was going to make Scott hate her than she wanted that part of her life over with. Being without him would only sting worse later on. She opened her mouth a few times and then closed it as the words rearranged themselves in her head, and then sighed a bit.
"There's no good way to say this but I have to get it out of the way so I'm just going to tell you. I slept with Logan. There. It's out in the open. You can hate me all you like."
Scott bit off too big a bite and started to choke at Emma’s admission. It was so unexpected and … wrong... that it was probably a good thing he was choking because it gave him an excuse to absorb the information. “Logan. Short, hairy and hypocritical Logan?”
"With the claws and the body odor problem, yes. Heaven knows he needs to get that under control, but I'm not going to be the one to tell him." Emma sniffed a bit, and took another long sip of her coffee. Scott wasn't running away, at least. She didn't know if that was good or bad.
Scott spent a moment recovering, then pinched the bridge of his nose. “Well, it’s your body, I don’t have any say in it. But Logan?” Did that man have to stick it in EVERY woman Scott liked?
Of course, the answer would be yes.
Emma picked up one of the spoons and began to stir it around in her coffee. It was one of the few nervous gestures that hadn't been trained out of her in finishing school, "I don't think it escaped your notice that I've been dealing with an exceptionally low point in my life. Nothing quite drives that nail home than when you lower your standards enough to sleep with a man like that. Mind you-"
And she held up a finger with her free hand to stop him from speaking, just in case, "There are many very decent qualities about him, despite the negative ones we've named off. And I hadn't yet gotten to the part in the dreams where the two of you were so very at odds. Logan is one of the few X-men who ever told me I'd earned my place. And it turns out that we were living in the same neighborhood. He'd been watching over me here and there, keeping me out of trouble. But it was mostly about how much I hated myself, and I feel like I owe you both an apology."
After a pause, she added, “Which is a rare thing, coming from me.”
“You don’t need to apologize for sleeping with anyone.” Except maybe Namor. He reached across the table and touched her hand. “I don’t hate you.”
"I used him, Scott. And I used him to make myself feel worse. I think he used me to get back at you. I may have hit rock bottom but I still know the difference between wrong and right. And I think... I was angry at you. I forget why, now. Maybe I even thought that doing it would push you away." Emma frowned a bit and tapped her spoon against the side of her mug.
"Some days I wish you'd have stayed away. Are you sure you won't hate me? It might make our lives less complicated."
“Since when are our lives ever uncomplicated?” Scott gave her a bemused look. Mostly, he felt a little useless. That he couldn’t help her and maybe he still couldn’t, because she had to be the one to get over her pride and ask him.
"Since... never, really. Not even in our childhoods," Emma admitted. One of her hands reached out for the cookies she'd ordered to go with her coffee, and she let out a bit of a mental sigh.
I actually have a plan, you know. I'm just not sure how one end meets the other.
He raised his eyebrows at her, like asking her to elaborate. You can bounce ideas off me, if you want. I just want to help.
I'm actually making more in my current profession than I did as an educator, though it almost doesn't' feel worth it, Emma admitted, her mental tone a bit sad. It was easier to be vulnerable in her own mind where it was safe than out in the open.
It was also more convenient to use telepathy while you were eating. She really wanted to finish her cappuccino while it was still warm.
I put as much of it as I can afford away in a special account that Raven secured for me. Each time I get paid - and we're talking thousands of dollars of dollars, each week.
Why doesn’t it feel worth it? It was a lot of money, but he also knew it was kind of a drop in the bucket when it came to what she was used to. He couldn’t really judge her, though. She was taking control and owning it, and okay it was a little hot.
What are you going to do with your nest egg?
The most true thing I've ever said, I think, is that I'm an educator. It's one of the only fulfilling things I've ever done with my life, or ever wanted to do. Holding the attention of an entire room of horny people is fun but not precisely rewarding, Emma replied.
She added, as she nibbled on her cookie, There's more than one way to skin a cat. I'm planning on using that money to take over Frost Industries on my own, and move it here. It wasn't the plan in the beginning... selfishly, I was simply going to buy my house back. But I want something more and I can't live like this forever. Only I've obviously gotten lost along the way and no one's going to respect an exotic dancer in a leadership position.
Do you really have enough money for a hostile takeover? Or are you planning on leveraging your previous claim? He didn’t know how much claim she still had, but he knew she had the ovaries to make a play. He respected that.
Emma shook her head, Not yet, no. And I'm not sure how to go about it. Oh I went to business school, but that doesn't mean I know how to get from there to here. My previous claim does exist, I have a window within which to collect before the board moves on without me. Currently my sister's acting in my stead.
And I know how you feel about that already, Scott thought back, a little wryly. If you want some help, you have it. I think you need to move while you still have time. Moving the HQ out here might make a lot of business sense too.
And he liked that idea because it meant she wouldn’t leave.
Considering how many companies have set up branches over here already. We can network together in a way. He would only let me keep the fortune if I moved back home and took it over. Those were the stipulations, and as I'm sure you're aware from our little drunken tete-a-tete that one night, I've been left penniless because of it. I want what I want, Scott, but I have no idea how to make all the pieces on the board move towards that goal. Especially now that my dirty little secret is out.
If Emma ever admitted to having regrets, taking the job she'd taken might have been one of them. Not so much because she regretted the actual job she'd been doing; Exotic dancing was liberating and she thought that the people who belittled her over it needed to be more open minded. But because she'd been caught at it, Being caught in this temporary profession has severely damaged my reputation. I'm not going to pretend it hasn't.
What if you turned it to your advantage. Turned it into a sob story at how you had to find a way to make ends meet because you’d been cut off.
Hmm. Some sort of exclusive interview about how he forced my hand and was such an overbearing father, etc etc? Make myself the victim and talk about how I dragged myself out of a bad situation?
It was absolutely brilliant, though it wasn't usually her thing. She didn't enjoy being the victim, but she could definitely play the role of one when it was necessary. Emma was nothing if not a survivor.
He knew she wouldn’t like that, but sometimes you had to do things you didn’t like to get to a place where you were comfortable again. They were both people who understood that.
He shifted to his real voice. “Like I said, if you need anything, let me know. Even if it’s just a 3am chat.”
"I'll need to think on your brilliant little idea a bit, but I might be able to put that to work. Of course you know how much I hate admitting that I need anything at all, but..." Emma smirked a bit at Scott, "Well, I suppose I can make an exception for you. I do miss a cozy chat with you in the odd hours of the morning."
Scott put his hand over hers on the table. “I miss that too.” He missed cozy anything in the odd hours of the morning. He missed having her in his head, he missed just having her around. There was a lot that he missed, but when looking at her those were near the top.
"Scott..." Emma trailed off, then shook her head and smiled. It was a smile that conveyed a mixture of adoration and amusement. Her hand shifted, so that her fingers could intertwine with his, "Of course you'd stay by my side in the face of everything. Knowing everything you do about me, here you are. We really are meant to be together, aren't we?"
If not lovers, then friends, though Scott would prefer the former. As much as he’d tried to keep his distance, he’d failed, hadn’t he. “Maybe we are.”