Danny Zuko Timestamps: Eight Years After
Title: Danny Zuko Timestamps: Eight Years After
Author: Alsike
Fandom: X-Men/Criminal Minds x-over
Pairing: Emma Frost/Emily Prentiss
Rating: NC-17 (yes indeed)
AN/Disclaimer: Not my girls.
Word Count: ~1600
Apologies: This was really honestly absolutely a shit week. First classes starting, fine, excessive meetings about planning, getting semi-bullied into seminars and reading groups, and probably a DnD campaign that will be very bad for my academic career. And then I got sick. Did I get a cold? Yes. Did I also vomit my guts out? Yes. How is it fair to get a cold and a flu bug at the same time? :( And I suck at having a roommate. And I'm still hacking. But Old Irish is kind of awesome. So that's okay at least. And I was muddling around trying to read Chomsky when a song came on and an image of Emily (the canon one, when she's been gutted by life yet again) came with it, and I was like 'fic! I want to write fic!' So I edited this bit. I really don't have any sense of how it flows, so I hope it's okay. It was also inspired by a Cyndi Lauper song, so it really shouldn't have turned out this angsty. But it did. ANGST.
Eight years after that summer...
Michael was dead. Emily couldn’t believe it. She backed away from the doctor, and ran into his parents. They were too full of their own grief to care about her, but his mother took her hand. “Thank you for all that you did for him.”
“Don’t… don’t thank me. Don’t…”
“Do you have somewhere to go? You shouldn’t be alone.”
Emily thought of her empty hotel room and gave a weak little sob. “Yeah,” she said. “Please don’t worry about me.”
Emma was in France. That was all she could recall. His parents had moved Michael to Barcelona, there was better palliative care there, and she got in the little rental car and drove. Dusk was just falling when she entered France, and the traffic lightened as it got later. At midnight she passed the outskirts of Bourges, and she sped at the extreme limit of the tiny car’s ability through the morning to Paris. She got lost twice on the twisty cobbled streets before she found the little apartment in the Latin Quarter. She parked half on the curb, not caring whether it was legal or not, and climbed up the stairs to the rickety landing, and then froze, not sure if she should knock on the door. But she was here. Where else was she going to go, and her fist hit the wood twice, and then slid down it, the strength that had carried her this far dissipated.
Emma opened the door, groggy and confused, and irritated, ready to rip whoever was waking her up at four in the morning a new one.
“Hey,” was all Emily could manage to say.
Emma hadn’t seen her for nearly two years, and still, the annoyance faded immediately. “Hey,” Emma replied sleepily, her eyes warming and the corners of her mouth lifting into a smile. Emily slid into her, burying her head in her shoulder. Emma’s arms curled around her naturally, she walked her in, kicking the door shut, and moved Emily to the hastily abandoned bed. Emily cried herself to sleep, and Emma petted her absently until she slept soundly, having never fully woken up.
In the morning, Emma watched Emily’s eyelids flickering, trying to open but sticky with tears, and she bent down and pressed a light kiss on her lips. “Want to tell me why you’re in France, darling?” she asked, and gave her coffee. Emily held the coffee and looked up at Emma in the sunny loft, and for a moment all the horrible weeks in the hospital seemed far away.
Eventually, she managed to explain.
“You said he was sick. I didn’t realize it was…”
Emily nodded and looked down into her coffee. Emma’s hand rested on her shoulder.
Emily’s voice was quiet and almost resigned. “Is this… is this what we get for being what we are?”
Emma flinched, but she didn’t pull her hand away. “What?” her voice was bitter. “You want to believe that God’s out to get us? So what.” There were enough real people in her life who hated her. She didn’t need to imagine more.
Emily hardly responded. She leaned on her hands, pressing her knuckles against her closed eyes. “I’d rather know I was going to hell than believe that there’s no meaning to anything. It wouldn’t change me. I’d rather be a villain than a hypocrite.” She swallowed. “I’d rather be a villain than nothing.”
“Because then he wouldn’t be really gone.” Emma shook her head. “You’d want him to suffer an eternity in hell just so you could see him again? That’s selfish.”
Emily sank into the pillows, her hand shaking and threatening to spill the coffee. Emma cupped her fingers, keeping it steady, until she could put it down. “He’s not supposed to be dead.” Her voice shook as much as her hand, and there was nothing Emma could do about that.
“I am sorry,” she said, a little bitterly. And then she laughed weakly. “You know, he was the only one of your friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, that fiancé you had for ten minutes, that I was really afraid of. If he had ever decided that girls were for him, that would be it. You’d be together forever. I am sorry, because I know you loved him.”
She had never seen Emily wear such a sad smile. “I don’t know. He told me that the thing he had wanted the most was to find someone… someone who was home.” And she looked up, her eyes limpid with unshed tears. “He told me that he wouldn’t have fucked it up like me.”
Emma laughed soundlessly, and leaned in, letting their foreheads press together. “You didn’t fuck up.”
Emily caught her shoulders, pushing her down until she could see her face. “There was so much he wanted. He wanted to be a dad, and encircle the universe in a painting, and get really really drunk one more time.”
“Sounds like him,” Emma said, wishing she knew why Emily’s eyes were so intense.
“He ran out of time.” And it was a kick in the gut. “I know I was supposed to give you time, but I can’t.” And Emily was cupping her face, pulling her in, and kissing her, helplessly.
Emma parted her lips and kissed back, tasting the coffee and bitterness on her lips, covering her, letting her weight rest on Emily’s hips and pressing down her shoulders. She didn’t flinch when Emily’s fingers dug deeply into her arms, holding on as if she was afraid she’d disappear.
People disappeared, and you had to hold on as tightly as you could while they were still there. Later, when you forgot how quickly it happened, you could remember things like pride and irony, and that there was no fucking way you could find the person you were meant for when you were fourteen and have it work out like some sort of fairytale. You could remember to let that get in the way, remember to forget that you couldn’t count on having the chance to take your time. You could pretend that bitter kisses and finger-tip-bruises were nothing but animal lust, rather than clear inscriptions of the knowledge that all love stories end in tragedy.