Eh, Emma/Scott fic. There aren't enough. Kind of one of those late night ideas, I'll leave it up to you if it's horrible or okay.
Blindfolded-
She's awake in the dark, little strings of dream still hanging on in her mind. Her eyes stay closed, like shutters on a window, blocking out the morning sun. It's another day, Just another day waking up cold and stiff, smoke in her breath and weight pressing down on her. Just another bloody day, she reminds herself.
Her name is Emma Frost. It's what the papers say, useless as though a passport may be when the only checkpoint she's ever has to pass consists of the door to the hangar, as much at they might hate that.
They aren't worth neither your time nor effort, she silently recites, as though it is fact written in stone. Times Tables. Pythagorean Relationship. Emma shakes the latter from the mind. It reminds her too much of Jean, and Scott, and herself, wherever it is she fits these days. She feels like a fool, an awkward teenage girl desperate to make it into the "cool" crowd. Most of all, Emma can't believe she's allowed this crowd of illiterates do this to her.
Emma opens her eyes to a strange new world, not the one she expected, nor the one that haunted her nights. She's cold from the window Scott left open last night, stiff from being curled in a ball around her pillow. Scott's lit incense on their bedside table, his backpack and laptop resting over the top the mountain of sheets at her back. Scott himself is leaning shirtless against the wall, white-knuckled fist pressed to his mouth. He suddenly notices her eyes are open and strides over, his dark formal pants creating jagged lines on the white walls Emma had Henry help her paint.
"You feeling okay, Em?", he asks, concerned, caring, touching her thin face with his smooth fingers, wearing a small smile.
Scott's voice is stronger than it's ever been telepathically. Of Course. He's a leader. His bloody job is to sound sure of himself.
Scott's visored eyes gaze endlessly Emma's, searching for comprehension and meaning. Scott has an uncanny ability to read her, and she subconsciously ebbs away, wondering why her shields wither in this man's gaze. Pull it together, Emma. This is ridiculous. She hates it when this happens, when either she or Scott wake up before the other and are confronted with the fact that before the shields and the confidence of leaders, they're vulnerable as children, flowing pure like water from nightmare after nightmare to the one right there in front of them. In that purity, somehow the insecurities they've collected seep out and...this happens.
"Hey? Em? You good?", Scott asks again, perched on the edge of the bed, close enough for Emma to see the stubble on his chiseled face, yet leagues apart, his hand in his lap, like a child watching an insect in fear in wonder.
She wants to reply, yet the words get caught in her throat and Emma bites down hard on her lip. I do have the right to dignity, you know.
"Emma?"
Oh, she really does wish he'd stop. Stop asking her if she's okay. Does Scott Summers, the brilliant tactician, not realize he's headed toward an imminent, messy failure? Emma's seen his Danger Room situations, where actions lead to reactions and causes become consequences. He knows which choices will lead to which outcome, yet he can't see it.
He can't see that the woman beside him could destroy him, that it's inevitable that someday, she'll find someone better, that he'll go back to her. She tries, really tries to love Scott, though the better attempts still leave her feeling like the evil stepmother, trying to fill that triangle with a circle. God, why does everything come back to that damn shape?
Scott's too busy circling her bloody lip with his thumb, a puzzled look on his face. Has that visor made you blind? Emma wants to shout and protest and pull the both of them out of this bottomless mess. She wishes this was one of his hypothetical games, where each path had a definite endpoint. She almost wishes she was waking up in Sebastian's lavish quarters, to a six-figure breakfast and cold-cut conversation, instead of here, with Scott, an absolute mess, that for all her power, is as illegible as the students' handwriting.
Emma allows herself to wonder if Scott knows all of this, and yet lets it slip. Maybe they're in the same boat, satisfied with simply the company and oblivious to defeat they would have each seen from miles away. It's quite difficult to tell, when he has an ice cube pressed to her mouth while his other hand smooths out her hair. Hard to tell.
They're silent for few precious seconds, before Scott sprawls out of the bed and draws Emma close.
"Feeling Better, Em?", he whispers, spearmint mouthwash in his cool breath.
Emma shuts her eyes and basks in the welcome of shadow. She can feel Scott's steady breath, the rise and fall of his chest. His beating heart. The warmth of his body beside hers, the whispers in her ear she barely understands. It's comforting and terrible at the same time. Emma's never had someone to fall back on, and she knows that what she has today can burn away by tomorrow. But...If this is wearing a blindfold of sorts-
"Yes.", she finally answers Scott in a new voice, shaky but sure. Emma looks over at him and takes a deep breath.
"Yeah. I thought so, Em."
They lie like this until Emma pulls herself up, shoves those thoughts away and joins Scott wordlessly in making the bed. Just another bloody day. Maybe she doesn't always need to think of the end.