**************Bench Talks
"You got me a teddy bear."
From her expression, I guessed that she was less than overwhelmed with awe and love for me.
"It has your name embroidered on it." I pointed out, waving the thing's paw at my therapist.
She pressed long, manicured nails to her temple, the look in her eyes one that I was blindingly familiar with-despair. "Scott. It's a teddy bear."
"Um-yeah. I noticed." She couldn't ever just accept a gift.
"How old do you think I am?" Her voice was laced with contempt, her light accent deepening with the promise of sarcasm to come.
"I . . . am not going to answer that." I said, settling the teddy bear in my lap once it became clear that Emma Frost was not, under any circumstances, going to accept the furry wonder. "I thought everybody liked teddy bears."
"Give it to Logan, then." she drawled.
"Did I mention that it has your name . . ."
"Yes, Scott. Yes, you did."
Silence.
"Would you have preferred chocolate?" I asked.
I thought she might strangle me then and there-but she wasn't called Frost for no reason. The woman's composure was legendary. "What-" she paused, took a deep and martyred breath, and continued, "on earth are you talking about?"
"For a thank-you gift. Beast said chocolate, Kitty said a teddy bear. I figured another girl would know best. Was I wrong?" I was twenty-three years old, held not one, but two college degrees, and captained the largest(and longest standing)team of mutants in North America-but being with Emma made me feel like a spoiled, sulky child. She had a way of shaming me without even meaning to; which was great when I needed a kick in the pants to get my head out of my rear, but proved unhelpful when, like now, I was trying to just have a conversation.
"You listened to Pryde," Emma sighed more than spoke, "and got me a teddy bear. You are aware that I've castrated males for less?"
I edged away from her on the bench. She might have been nearly two heads shorter than me and at least half my weight, but she was no less scary because of it. I didn't doubt that, between her careers as a supervillain, headmistress, and X-Man, she had the capability to put me in my place . . . whatever she deemed that to be. I wasn't too eager to find out.
"And what is this thank-you gift nonsense?" she demanded. "I don't require physical affirmations of gratitude."
She also just got entirely too wordy for me to follow.
"I don't need gifts." she clarified impatiently. One of her fingers found its way into her mouth, and she chewed on her pinky nail absently-her nervous habit.
"I just-I mean, you did so much for us-for me-" I shrugged. "It seemed like an asshole move to not do something."
"So you bought me a $12.99 teddy bear recommended to you by a sixteen-year-old." she said dryly. "I can see that you were just dying to make it up to me."
"What happened to, 'it's the thought that counts'?" I demanded.
"What happened to 'diamonds are a girl's best friend'?" she countered. "Now that would have been a proper thank-you."
"I thought you didn't need physical affirmations of gratitude." I said, air quoting her.
Emma's smile was the one I knew best-devious, condescending, and(if you squinted very, very, very hard and looked using only one eye)containing a sliver of affection. "You delightfully ignorant and asinine man. When diamonds are involved," she purred, "all bets are off."
I shook my head. "You're too much trouble."
"And you," she leaned forwards, brushing my forehead with those long, lovely fingers, "are too good." She pushed the teddy bear closer to me, until my hand closed over it again, the soft fur tickling my inside arm. "Keep your thanks. Whatever I did, it wasn't for you."
"Aww, and here I thought it was just because you liked me." I teased. "Take the bear, or else Kitty and Bobby will think that I crashed and burned."
"You did crash and burn," she pointed out. "And what in the world am I going to do with a teddy bear?"
"Put it in your room?" I suggested. "You could sleep with it on your pillow."
Emma gave me a withering look. I practically felt the threat of castration return. "You hid a camera in it, didn't you?" she accused.
"What? Of course I didn't!" I said, affronted.
She eyed me, unconvinced. "Scott, darling, you've been unnaturally good-humored during this whole conversation. One would think it suspicious at the very least."
"Fine!" I threw up my hands, exasperated. "Toss the damn thing in the trash for all I care. Send it through the Prof's paper shredder, or use it to smuggle a bomb into the White House. Just take it."
Emma looked at the stuffed animal with distaste.
"It's a teddy bear."
Aaaaaaand, here we were again. "Yeah. We established that."
"It would completely ruin my reputation as a badass telepathic queen." Emma started to chew on her pinky nail again. How she got away with saying things like that and still coming across as stunningly cold and evil was beyond me.
"Well, sitting here with this thing in my lap hardly contributes to my dark-moody-and-handsome leader image," I pointed out.
She fixed me with another of her lovingly disgusted looks. "I hate to be the bearer of bad news, darling, but you aren't handsome. You're anal, aggressive, overbearing, neurotic, and endearingly awkward, but you aren't handsome."
"Now that's just mean." I complained half-heartedly. "Here I am, risking total humiliation via teddy-bear-holding just to preserve your reputation, and you have to go and say something like that."
"Well, you shouldn't have bought me the teddy bear. I really have no idea what possessed you."
"Beast bought his girlfriend a lava lamp. She didn't complain."
"I'm not your girlfriend. And Beast's girlfriend also happens to be an alien. I'm sure she's impressed by a great many things that the rest of us find juvenile."
"Don't let her hear you say that." I whistled. "She packs heat like nobody's business."
"Like you?" Emma asked slyly.
"Nobody packs heat like me. But let's stay on topic." I turned towards her on the bench, tucking one leg under the other. "How am I not handsome? All of the girls I've dated thought I was handsome."
"Again, I am not your paramour," she said, with tired annoyance. "Furthermore, how many girls have you even dated?"
" . . . one." I admitted grudgingly. She smirked. "See? How is that in any way a reliable gauge of attractiveness?"
"Hey, I shower every day," I defended myself. "And I'm even shaving regularly now, too."
"Whose influence was that, I wonder?" she muttered. I ignored her.
"Aside from wearing makeup, what else can I do?"
"To begin with, there are the glasses." Emma gestured in the air with her hands at my lenses. "Bad fashion choice. Extremely bad fashion choice. And the strange visor that covers most of your face?" she snorted. "Granted, it does the world a favor, but you resemble an action figure every time you aren't using it."
"Well, gee, I could ditch the glasses, but then I'd be burning you to a crisp right now." I said sarcastically.
Emma sighed. "Why must you be difficult?"
"I'm not being difficult. This is an inherent part of my nature." I objected.
She rolled her eyes. "Everyone else can control their mutation, but Scott Summers? Nooo. He's far too special for that."
"I would if I could!" I snapped. "Don't you think that I hate being like this? Seeing everything through a red haze?"
She snorted. "You would do that even without your powers. Anger is your default setting, after all. And, honestly darling, this bemoaning does nothing to raise your standing in my eyes. Self-pity is entirely last century."
Sometimes I just wanted to kill Emma. She never stopped being my therapist, talking me through problems that I didn't even want to think about, seeing through all the defenses I tried to put up, determinedly not just taking the stupid teddy bear. She was the one person who I couldn't lie to, and not from lack of trying. Cliched as it was(and it really, really, really was), she got me as no other human being did or could. I wasn't sure if it was a telepathy thing or an Emma thing, but I mostly suspected the latter.
If only because our connection went both ways.
"Enough," I said after a pause. "We can end this bickering right now."
"We can?" Emma raised that eyebrow again, this time in disbelief. "I confess to being under the impression that we will be bickering right up to our dying day. I was rather looking forwards to it, actually."
"We can." I affirmed, taking the teddy bear in my hand again and thrusting it at her. "Just take the bear."
She deliberated, looking at the stuffed animal as if it were a foreign object that she wasn't completely sure was safe. "You honestly didn't plant a camera in it?"
"For goodness' sake, no, I didn't!" I exclaimed, wiggling it for emphasis. "Look, it's a gift, it has your name on it, and it comes with no strings attached. Just accept it graciously and we can both move on."
She'd been moving, albeit slowly, to take it, but then paused and looked up at me. "No strings attached?" she queried.
"None." Exasperated, I just dropped the bear in her lap, where she transferred her gaze immediately. Her hands hovered over the object, and her expression said that it might as well have been bird droppings resting there instead of an adorable fuzzy creature that I paid, not $12.99 as she'd claimed, but $15.99 for. Not that that's important or anything.
"I was hoping for strings, too." she said.
I didn't bother deciphering that. "Ems, thank you. For everything. Now can this whole conversation be over and done with?"
Emma gave me a smile-a real smile, not a smirk or a mocking grin. Her blue eyes went soft for a second, and she reached out to touch my face again. "Yes, it's over," she murmured.
BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP.
I groaned, eyes sliding open, breaking layers of sleep crust, hand reaching absently out for Emma.
"Scott?" Jean muttered sluggishly, and I froze.
I'd been dreaming of Emma again.
