Danny Zuko 11: First Time Fireworks
Title: Danny Zuko was a Hot Chick (part 11 of 20)
Author: Alsike
Fandom: X-Men/Criminal Minds x-over
Pairing: Emma Frost/Emily Prentiss
Rating: NC-17
AN/Disclaimer: Not my girls.
Word Count: 2208
Citrus Taste Summer Battle Prompt #11. First Time Fireworks
Apologies: I’m going to attempt to post these in chronological order, but I may not always succeed. Either way, they should stand on their own pretty well. I don't want to spoil my beautiful checkerboard, but I'll be out of town this weekend (rugby tournament!), and I may not have a chance to write or post on my scheduled dates. So here's a long one to tide you over.
Emily was having breakfast with them now. She was talking to Christian happily and trying to convince Cordelia that fireworks were fun, and that she shouldn’t be so blasé about everything. Her line of argument seemed to be that they were doing them over fields of dry grass, and every spark was a chance for the entire city to go up in flames. Emma wished her the best in her endeavor, but really really wished she wasn’t across the table right now. Adrienne had her sunglasses on and was lying back, having a mimosa that she had seduced a waiter into bringing her, and was entirely zoned out of the world. Emma wished she could imitate that. But she just felt sick to her stomach and pushed the horrible eggs around on her plate.
“Are you all right?”
Emily was looking at her now, looking worried. Emma stiffened.
“I’m fine. God! Don’t you have your own family? Why do you have to cling to us all the time?!”
Emma stood up, half tripping over her chair when it didn’t shove back easily, and turned and stormed out of the dining room. As she left she heard Cordelia yawn.
“Oh, is Emma crazy again today?”
* * *
“Emz, what’s wrong?” Christian cornered her in the hallway upstairs. “I asked Emily if you guys had had a fight, but she said no, and that you had been really nice to her yesterday, and she probably should have expected a backlash.” He narrowed his eyes. “She knows you way too well.”
Emma sighed and leaned back against the wall, cupping her fingers against her forehead. “I… I’ve just been out of sorts today. I didn’t sleep last night. And… god!” Emma thumped the wall. “I’ve been with her like twenty-four seven since we got here! Can’t I get a break?”
Christian stared at her. “From being glued to her lips?”
Emma scowled. “Fuck off!”
“Oookay,” Christian raised his hands in surrender. “I’ll leave you alone.”
He started to go and Emma grabbed his arm. “No.”
“No?”
“Come inside.” Emma pulled him into her and Cordelia’s room and then left him in the corner as she kicked off her shoes and flopped down on the bed. “This sucks,” she said flatly.
“Um? That you have a girlfriend who gives you lots of attention?”
“No.” Emma narrowed her eyes at him. “Guess again.”
“Why don’t you use your words?” But Christian came and sat down next to her, putting an arm around her shoulders. “Just talk.” He lay back, pulling her onto his chest. Emma stared up at the ceiling, still stiff as a plank, not ready to be comforted.
“Where do you see yourself in ten years?” she asked, her voice coming out like a frown. “Not… where do you want to be, but where do you actually think you’ll be?”
Christian considered this. “You want the pessimist’s view of the future?”
“The realist’s.”
“Mhm.” He stretched. “Well, lets see. I’ll be twenty eight, and just as gorgeous.” Emma snorted. “And I’ll have a job? Hopefully.”
“Love life?”
“I can’t really predict that. Maybe I’ll be with someone and maybe I won’t.”
Emma sighed. “But if you are with someone, will it be a guy?”
“Unless daddy pulls some serious blackmail on me, yeah. Are you having a gay crisis, Emma?”
“No.” Emma scowled at him.
“Are you sure? It doesn’t have to mean anything. Girls aren’t so horribly stigmatized if they go there and then decide to come back. And bi is hot.”
Emma shoved off of him. “That isn’t the problem!”
“Then tell me what is!”
“Get out!” Emma hit him with a pillow, and Christian retreated out the door, hands braced to protect his head. She slammed the door behind him.
“Yes,” he told Emily later. “She’s having a psychotic episode. Don’t worry about it, she’ll come round in a day or so.”
* * *
Emma didn’t look at her. She didn’t need to see Emily making sad eyes in her direction. She just needed… time, or perspective, or something. Or maybe…
You see, Emma’s never liked anyone before, that’s the real problem, the one that’s too embarrassing to say, and she doesn’t know how to calibrate this. And really, the other problem is that she’s never had anyone like her before, no one who would smile just because she came into the room, and really, it makes her ill that smile, because it’s so underserved, so irrational, and she’s jealous, because it’s like she’s the only one who doesn’t know, or at least doesn’t know and still thinks it matters. And she’s scared, but it’s not like she was going to admit that.
Maybe Emma needed Jake. He had shown up a few days before, red trunks billowing in the swimming pool and shaggy hair that he didn’t want to get wet. And she hadn’t cared. She hadn’t even noticed him until Cordelia pointed him out at lunch, said he was cute, and she had glanced at him, half registering his features, they were sort of normal, and made a noncommital noise since her mouth was full. Cordelia had rolled her eyes. “God, I didn’t think one girlfriend would turn you,” she had said. And Emma had choked, and coughed her mouthful into a napkin, whacked Cordelia in the back of the head, and headed to the bathroom to wash her face.
There were fireworks that night. The State was too broke to pay for them, but the resort wasn’t and took it upon itself to light up the darkness with colored bursts. The guests gathered on the rooftops, standing in groups, ooing and aahing. Emma leaned against the wall near the door and didn’t look up. The thunderous noise like gunshots shook the world. She was grateful for the deafening bursts. She didn’t have to think with them shaking her head. She didn’t have to walk that tightrope of not knowing.
“Bored?” asked the boy with his shorts slipping down his flat ass and red-tipped hair in his eyes. The answer to that, Emma knew, was always yes. And maybe he was into her because it was dark, and it wasn’t like it was New Year or anything, but holidays were always shitty when you spend them with your family, and he knew that. Emma said “yeah” and “how long are you here for?” and “where are you from?” and she was happy to find out that he was leaving in two days, and that he lived in Oklahoma, and she kissed him, because there were fireworks, and alcohol, and her life was falling apart.
And then Emma realized that she’d never actually seen Emily angry before, irritated and drunk and pissed off, yeah, but not angry. And it was scary, because she was cool and calm, and it reminded her of her dad, and you never wanted to see Emma’s dad get cool and calm, because when he blew the explosion was so much worse than you had expected. It was something you never saw coming, and it could knock you over so hard that you wouldn’t know if you were ever going to get back up.
“What was that?”
Emma shrugged, looking away with pinched lips. “Jealous?”
And Emily hit her, a sharp jab to the face, splitting her lip. Emma didn’t notice the pain at first, too shocked at how nerdy klutzy Emily can throw a punch. And then she was pissed, because it fucking hurt, and she was holding her face, and she was not about to take that from anyone who wasn’t her father.
“Are you some kind of whore?”
And Emma lunged for her, hands on her neck, clawing, and they stumbled, falling into the hedge, and this was really stupid for them to be fighting on a roof, and if that hedge had just happened to have a hole in it right there, they could both be dead now, and Emma grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. And… “God! Just- just understand!” and she was crying, and she didn’t want to be crying, but they could have been dead, “I can’t-“
And Emily was looking at her mouth, sort of stricken, and she held Emma’s shoulders back, too tightly, but didn’t shake her. “Just say it!” she cursed. And for the first time words came.
“I had the chance to kiss a cute boy, I took it.” And she shouldn’t have been crying while she was saying this, but she couldn’t stop it, and her lip was fucking throbbing, and maybe she deserved it. “That’s what summer’s supposed to be about, isn’t it? Doing shit so I can tell people, oh, I kissed a cute guy this summer, on the fourth of July, under the fireworks, not I…” she choked and swallowed and went on. “I went all the way with some weird girl, and I-”
“Is that what you think of me?”
“And I’m never going to see her again!” Emma shouted over her. “I’m never going to see you again, and you come in here and fuck up my life, and then you’re gone, back to fucking Italy, and someone nicer than me, and I don’t even know if you like me! You said you didn’t, you didn’t like me at all, and it was supposed to be fine, just fucking you, because I didn’t care-“
“I like you.” Emily touched her face, and Emma looked up and stopped raging at the world. “I like you, Emma.” She sounded hurt. “Not at first, maybe, but I really do. You’re not someone I want to get away from, and I don’t usually spend time with people I don’t like. And yesterday… I like you, and I wish… I wish there was a more emphatic way to say that.” She caught her hand. “Ski da yo.”
Emma stared at her. “Is that Japanese? Are you trying to seduce me in Japanese?”
Emily flushed and looked away. “I wasn’t really trying to seduce you. Not after punching you in the face.”
Emma wiped her mouth on the back of her hand and glanced at the smear of blood. “At least you didn’t get the nose. My father grounded me for a month when he found out how much it cost to have it reset after he broke it.”
Emily looked stricken in her direction for way too long, and then finally caught her arm and pulled her towards the doors heading inside. “Come on. Let’s wash that off. Destroy the evidence.”
Emma hung back a little, and in the hall Emily glanced back at her, worried and self-recriminating and looking generally like she was the one who’d been punched in the face. “You said you like me.”
Emily nodded.
“Do you think that will change?”
“Not… dramatically.”
Emma considered this. She might be wrong of course, but it was worth a shot. “So if I called you in say, ten years, and said ‘my life sucks, I don’t have any friends, and my parents threw me out,’ would you… offer me a place to stay?”
Emily looked incredulous. “Mightn’t we prepare for the apocalypse while we’re at it?”
“I’m not-“ Emma swallowed. “I’m not just joking around here. Give me an answer!”
“Of course,” Emily said. “Even if you were in half that much of a mess.”
“Is that what you meant, when you said you knew they’d help if you were drowning.”
Emily flipped back hurriedly to one of the earliest conversations they had had. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“So you’re my friend.”
Emily let out a small huff of laughter. “Yeah. I’m your friend.”
“Okay,” Emma says, and she hated the way her voice sounded, small and needy in the dim hallway. Emily put her arms around her and squeezed tighter than she should, and she pressed her head into Emma’s shoulder, and Emma thought, ‘she’s probably getting blood on the shoulder of her dress,’ but didn’t much care. Stains are important, like scars. They make you keep the memory.
After that, she let Emily pull her into the bathroom and wash her face. She cleaned her lip, but spent a humiliating amount of time wiping tear tracks out from under her eyes.
“You know,” Emma said, softly, as she had the cloth pressed to her cheek. “Your roommate’s summer girlfriend idea is shit.”
“It is?”
“It’s based on Grease right?”
And Emily laughed, like she had been nervous and wasn’t anymore. “Yeah.”
“You can’t… you can’t just have that summer and then leave it all behind. Go back like nothing is different.”
“You can’t?”
“No!” Emma caught her wrist and pulled the rag down. “Like Sandy, the girl, right? She thought she could. She just wanted to go to school, make her parents happy, whatever sort of thing a good girl wants. And she tries. But that’s the whole point of the story, isn’t it? That the seeds have been planted, and nothing is ever going to be the same.”
“Oh,” said Emily. “Yeah, I guess that is what the movie’s supposed to be about.”
“Fuck,” Emma muttered, barely audibly, not looking at her. “I really wanted to be Danny Zuko.”
* * *
Part 12