Valentine, the destroyer, Valentine, you belong
In the stars, where you are, always rollin' on.
Cried, I've cried till I couldn't carry on.
It's a lonely, lonely feelin' when your Valentine is wrong.
It's a lonely, lonely feelin' when your Valentine is wrong.--Old 97's, Valentine

Valentine, the destroyer

"Ahem."

Emma looks up from her desk, blinking at Scott. He's holding something behind his back. He looks vaguely embarrassed. "I--I have something for you."

It's Valentines Day. Jean Grey-Summers has been dead for a few months. Right now, there are pretty red roses lying on her grave. From Scott. Emma knows that because she can see it, right in the forefront of Scott's mind. She can see the bright crimson pressed against the slate-gray stone. Delicate petals curved and just touching the J in Jean's name. Emma looks down and sees dirt, mud, on his shoes. It rained yesterday, so he wouldn't have gone then. Scott has been gone for a little over an hour. Enough time to buy two dozen roses, and make a stop on the way home.

A stop, somewhere, where the earth is still damp and half-uncovered by grass.

"Yes?" Emma's voice is cooler than usual. She can't help it. That he thinks this is acceptable is ridiculous.

"Flowers. For Valentines Day." Scott holds out his hand. The roses are pretty, tight buds. The ones on Jean's grave are opened; lush, in full bloom. If it is a metaphor, Emma does not think Scott means it intentionally. She's not even sure she gets it. She's angry, anyway.

"Thank you," Emma says politely. Behind her eyes, she can feel something burning and hot. It curls like a sickness in her stomach, but her expression never changes. "There's a vase in the kitchen. They'd look nice in the windowsill."

Scott stares at her for two seconds. He looks like maybe she's kicked him in the stomach. That's how Emma feels, too.

Maybe, a little voice whispers, poison-soft, maybe that's how you deserve to feel. Emma doesn't listen to that voice. Instead, she sees Jean's grave, and Scott, leaning over it. Pressing his fingers against her name. Sees Scott standing before her, halfway across the room, holding out the flowers like they are a bomb he's just defused.

Upstairs, in the top drawer of her dresser, is a watch. It's engraved. She noticed that his was scratched and the leather worn in places. It's wrapped in a white box with a pretty silk red ribbon. Emma decides, right in that moment, to give it to him for his birthday. She wonders viciously if he got a discount for buying two dozen roses instead of just one. Maybe the florist thought Scott had two girlfriends. Emma wonders if that can be true, even if one of them is dead.

They never talk about it. The flowers eventually wilt and die in the kitchen window. No one touches them. One morning, fed up, Kitty tosses them in the trashcan with a look at Scott. He looks down, at his coffee. When he looks up, Emma turns her face away.

ooooooooOOOOOOOOoooooooo

The next year, Emma finds a pretty white corset with ice-blue satin ribbon. She's wearing it with white sheer stockings when Scott comes into their bedroom, but it feels like a lie. She's tense and unhappy and she hopes he's not going to come through the door with candy or, God forbid, roses.

He has a candy heart, and a card, and a pretty bouquet of orchids. "Happy Valentines Day," he tells her, and unlike last year, she thinks he actually means it this time. If he visited Jean's grave that day, he is smart enough not to think about it right then. He leans down and kisses her. "These are for you."

Emma wonders if the man knows her at all. She doesn't like candy samplers--honestly, would anyone think she did?--and cards with trite cliches that mean nothing. The orchids are pretty, though. Pretty and lush and exotic. Different. "Scott," she says, her voice careful. "Why did you buy me these things?"

"Because. It's Valentines Day," he says, and he's so earnest and slightly confused that she's half-tempted to forget it and smile and feed him chocolate-covered raisins or whatever sort of candy is in this ridiculous container. "Same reason you have on that get-up, I imagine."

Get up?

It is beginning to seem as if Scott Summers and Emma Frost are doomed to spend Valentines Day in a soft cocoon of resentment, the kind where you both want to scream but instead you smile politely and ask the other person to please pass the creamer.

Emma stands up. No. She saw where that led Scott, with Jean. She'll be damned if she watches him kill their relationship with the same emotional withdrawal that killed his marriage. "I am wearing this because I imagine you expect sex."

"Wow, honey. That's really...how could I resist such an enticing offer?" Scott stands up, too, and he rakes a hand through his hair. The candy and the card--Emma hasn't bothered to read it, but she can see, in his head, what it is. Some silliness about being there for one another and my dearest one that he's signed Scott, not even Love, Scott, just Scott. Nothing in that card is Emma.

"With the amount of effort you put into that gift, what else do you think you deserve?" Emma crosses her arms and glares at him. Glaring feels good. Glaring feels better than quiet recriminations and the constant worry that she's there, with him, because he doesn't know what else to do. Or, worse, that he's trying to pretend what they have is what he had, before.

God, anything but that.

"I didn't realize that was so important," Scott says slowly, and he slips, for just a moment. Thinks about Jean, and how she used to scoff at the holiday but secretly loved getting flowers; used to kiss him in front of all the students at dinner and make him blush. "It's--it's just a silly holiday. You seemed so mad at me last year for the roses--"

"Scott, if you want me to go to bed with you, ever again? Do not mention last year to me." Emma tilts her head. She looks at him with glacial eyes. "When you bought these things for Jean, it made sense. You loved her since you were children. You honestly meant all of that sappy tripe that's written on that card."

"Is that what this is about? Emma, I was married to Jean, and yes, I loved her--"

Emma closes her eyes and counts to ten. "When you think of me, Scott--when you honestly think of me, and what I am to you--do any of those words on that card make sense to you?" She opens her eyes. "Is that what I am to you? Hearts and flowers and cards?"

Scott looks angry, now. Emma feels a slow burn start in her blood. It feels good. It feels hot and real and pulsing and alive, and there is more emotion in the glare he's giving her across the room than in that piece of glossy paper wrapped up in a white envelope with her name on it. "No. Especially not when you're being such a bitch."

"Now you understand." She crosses the room to him, stares up at him challengingly. "If you think that is me, then you don't know me. But," she says, as his glare intensifies, "I know that's not true. What would you get me for Valentines Day, Scott, if you were shopping for the woman you are with and not doing what you think is expected?"

"I wouldn't buy you anything," he says honestly. "You're impossible to shop for. I don't have any idea what your hobbies are. You like stuff that I can't even pronounce and I don't know where to find it, anyway."

"Then don't buy me anything."

"Then you'll be mad at me for forgetting about you," he says immediately. "I know how women are, Emma."

"Scott, I have more money than God. I don't need you to buy me gifts."

"There is no pleasing you," he informs her, hands on his hips. "You don't like roses--I still don't get that, but okay, you're giving me the arctic stare again so we don't have to talk about it--and this gift doesn't have enough effort and yet now you say not to buy you anything. What the hell do you want, then?"

"I want something real," she says quietly. "From you. If it's anger, then fine. At least it's not pretense wrapped up in ribbon. I have enough of that in my life. I am that." She laughs, the sound harsh. "If I am pissing you off, Summers, then come over here and show me." Emma raises her chin. "If I drive you mad--"

"You do," he assures her, stepping forward, towards her.

"--then get over and show me. Shove me down on the bed. Hold my wrists down and tell me about it." Emma's heart is racing, now. They are standing just in front of one another, not touching. "Just don't give me that canned romantic nonsense that doesn't mean anything." Emma's smile is rapier-sharp. "That was the problem with your last marriage."

"Oh, like you're some expert on happy marriages?" Scott barks out a laugh. She's pissed him off, now. His hands are clenching into fists at his sides. "Maybe you were the problem with my last marriage."

"Oh?" Emma tilts her head. "I don't think so. I think you ruined that one without my help."

"Oh, you helped."

In two seconds, Scott is going to push her away. Emma presses herself against him and wraps her arms around his neck. He is tense but he makes no move to dislodge her, and she can see the immediate guilt on his face for what he said. Not having thought it--just having said it. "That was--I'm sorry, Emma."

Emma puts her fingers over his mouth. Lightly. "Stop apologizing," she says huskily. Especially when you don't mean it. "If thinking about me and Valentines Day makes you angry, then we'll go with that." She reaches up on tiptoes and replaces her fingers with her mouth. "If you're angry, be angry. Just don't be something you're not." Emma does that enough for the two of them.

His hands are on her waist; not tightly, just resting on the curve of her body, accentuated by the bone stays of the corset. "I really don't get you. I mean, a lot of the time. I understood Jean. I could shop for her. She liked movies. CDs. I knew her. I grew up with her. She made sense. You don't. I got you this stuff after three hours in the mall, trying to find you something that you'd like."

"The mall? Darling, that was your first mistake." Emma hides her smile in her hair as he tries half-heartedly to push her away. "I would rather you come home and tell me it's impossible to shop for me than bring me home the most unimaginative gift in the entire universe."

"God, Emma, you--I don't even know what to do with you, half the time."

Poor Scott. He really means that. "That's a much better gift, to hear that." She leans up, kisses him. He kisses her back, this time. He's rougher, more aggressive than usual. Emma gasps as he grabs her waist, hard. This is more like it. This is him, as he is, angry and aroused and frustrated. He shoves her on the bed and she stares up at him, a challenge, and leans back on her elbows. She yawns.

"Oh, now, that's just asking for it," Scott says, and she sees it, then; a hint of smile. He climbs on the bed and straddles her, his hands pinning her wrists down. "You piss me off and I still want to fuck you. How the hell do you do that?"

Emma licks her lips and grins up at him. "Thorn. Not a rose. Don't forget it."

His mouth is on her neck. He's biting her. He usually doesn't do that. Emma arches up towards the pain because it's hot like fire and it's bright and it's hers. It's not about love but lust; it's not about all those nice tender words written on the card, but the bright red spill of ink with which they're written. Not that it won't be about love, or giving pleasure, another time. It's just that right now, it doesn't have to be about anything other than take and rough.

"Something like that," Emma agrees breathlessly. She pulls against his hold on her wrists, and he tightens his hold and doesn't let her go. And that, is of course, all that Emma really wants.

When it is over, Scott raises his head and says, "God, Emma. I--that's--"

"What I do for you," Emma finishes huskily. She feels drowsy and sore and good, having taken what he had to give her.

Scott looks at her a long time. She doesn't try and see what he is thinking. He leans down and kisses her forehead before he moves away. His touch is gentle, now.

Emma stands up and discards the torn corset, takes off the stockings. She puts on satin sleep-shorts and a tank-top and crawls back in bed with Scott, turning out the lights. The room is dark. There is no moonlight, the clouds are heavy and thick and the curtains are drawn against the cold glass. She is expecting him to talk, and he does, after awhile.

"Jean. She and I...we didn't feel things, at the end. It was like we just...were. I should have been better. I should have told her, how I felt. Showed her. Something. I never...it's hard for me. To do that. At least, it was with her." His voice is in the dark is confused. "What does that say about me? About us, Emma? What if I can't--what if I can't do that, again?"

Emma turns in the dark, touches Scott's chest. "You know very well I think you were bad together, in the end. I know you weren't, not always. But you hurt each other more because you never let it out." Emma rests her head on his shoulder. He puts his arm around her, plays with her hair. "For us, there will be harder things. I just...we have enough problems as it is," Emma says dryly. "Let's not compound them with pretending to be people who we are not." They have no shared history. If they do not let these darker things out, they are doomed to fail. Emma knows that because she knows Scott.

She can feel Scott nod. "That's a good idea. I do love you, Emma. It's different. You're different." Than Jean remains unspoken. "But it doesn't mean it's not true. I'm still figuring it out. But I want to figure it out. I really do."

Emma is glad it is dark. There are sudden hot tears in her eyes. She's glad he can't see them. "I know," she says quietly, and then she has to stop talking. If he knows she's crying, he doesn't say anything about it. Emma loves him very much, for knowing not to mention it.