Commodum Ex Iniuria (The Reward of Injustice) [3/6?]
Title: Commodum Ex Iniuria (The Reward of Injustice) [3/6?] (I told you i don't know where this is going)
Author: Alsike
Pairing: Emily Prentiss/Emma Frost
Rating: PG-13
Summary: The members of the BAU are faced with hunting down a mutant killer. Other people may also be in pursuit. And Emily finds out that where there are mutants, divisive politics follow close behind.
Apologies: I'm sorry about the excess of philosophical debate. I wish i could say this was the only chapter with such decadence, but my characters just won't shut up.
It had been a long day with very few potential unsubs and no potential victims identified. This really was a case for old-fashioned police work, being on guard, finding witnesses, but the extent of the national parkland in the county and the low population density meant that there weren’t any witnesses and there weren’t any leads. News had spread throughout the community by word of mouth, and most people were panicked. Young people died in car accidents and it was an unbelievable tragedy. Young people were murdered and it was the sign of an apocalypse.
Emily hated taking the lead on cases. The weakest part of her profiling ability was the part that made it easy to rule out certain suspects. White male? It was an educated guess, but no more. The population of Kamas was 92.5% white, and the strength required to move the bodies to the locations that they were found in suggested male. But she could be wrong. It had to be a local, she rationalized, and young. The victims were all young.
She saw the man in the magenta sunglasses going into the office of the Kamas Inn. Were the X-Men staying here too? That was… uncomfortable.
Coming down after her shower, Emily spotted the redhead making tea in the common area.
“Hey.”
Jean looked up, and smiled politely. Emily remembered that this one was the other telepath, and stiffened her shields, but didn’t feel anything attempting to broach them.
“Hi, Agent… Prentiss, was it?”
“Yes.” Emily hesitated, but couldn’t figure out any other way to ask. “Is Emma around?”
“Emma?” Jean looked slightly stunned.
“Yes.” The woman didn’t seem to be finding an answer. “Blonde, scantily clad… irritating?”
Jean laughed. “I don’t know where she is. You know her?”
Emily winced. It was the ‘irritating’ that had given her away. “Not really. I just had a question…”
If anything Jean looked even more suspicious. “You could try me?”
Emily smiled hesitantly. “That’s okay.”
“Are you sure?”
“If you want to know what it is that badly, just rip it out. You are a telepath, aren’t you?”
Jean’s face closed at that. “You obviously know Emma. I don’t do that.”
Emily nodded, uncomfortable, and glanced out the windows, but she only spotted the hairy man smoking.
“How do you know her? Business? You’re human. I didn’t think she had any human friends.”
“Agent Prentiss,” came a sharp New England accent from the stairs. “If I didn’t know better I would say you were trading me in for more pleasant company.”
Emily turned to grin at Emma, ignoring the obvious curiosity from Jean. She had traded in the white leather fetish outfit for something more conservative, probably a good move for a rabidly Mormon town. But she still looked too bright and crisp for a place like this.
“How on earth could I miss the experience of Emma Frost eating in a town where the most prestigious restaurant serves hotdogs on its dinner menu?”
<< It seems you have utterly failed with the instructions I gave you. Are you prepared to suffer the consequences? >> Emma was a threatening presence in her consciousness.
<< Cut it out. >> Emily snapped. << She has nothing. We could have spoken on our way out of the station for all she knows. >>
<< And with your flirty little banter it’s apparent that in that exchange we set up a date? >>
<< God, what is your problem? Sometimes by random chance we are unlucky enough to run into someone we know. Why is it imperative for them to think we’ve never met? >>
<< I don’t have human friends. >>
<< Yeah, Jean mentioned as much. >>
<< You don’t understand. I don’t have human friends. I have pawns. If you come across as too friendly towards me, they’re going to poke around to make sure I didn’t do anything unethical. And then they’ll know. >>
<< Know what? >>
Instead of an answer, Emily received a barrage of images: Genosha, dead children, Emma’s tears, sex.
<< Will they think you’re weak? >>
<< They’ll know I’m weak. >>
“You wanted to consult on the case?”
It took a moment for Emily to flip conversations. Jean was still watching curiously, so she stood stiffly and tried to stay professional. “I heard it mentioned that you have a degree in psychology. I was wondering if you would share some insights on mutants and mental disease.”
“I would be honored.”
They passed Morgan on their way out. He grinned and flashed a not very veiled double thumbs up. Emma gave her a look. Emily rolled her eyes and thought pointedly about security footage in the BAU building.
Picnic tables and mosquitoes were the amenities of the local restaurants, but they were nearly empty as the frightened townspeople stayed home. Voices dissipated quickly in the open air. It was strange to be with Emma in a place like this. As professionals, as strangers again.
“You do know that there are only two police officers in this town. The group you were interviewing is mostly made up of hastily impressed forest rangers.”
Emily chuckled. “I’m not surprised. This area isn’t prepared for a serial killer. So, the police are the lieutenant and the kid that called you?”
Emma nodded, her face stern again. “I didn’t want us to come. I knew your team was likely to be here, and I didn’t want to see you again.”
That hurt. Emily walked silently for a few steps. “I don’t… I don’t understand.”
“Oh, come on. You of all people should be able to work it out. Your shields are so strong because you’ve spent your life cutting up emotions and memories, separating them out so they can’t influence your consciousness. You’ve had to do this. It’s a perfectly valid way of dealing with trauma. I would like to do the same, cut that time off, so I can move on again. You are part of that time.”
“You aren’t for me.” The glint of diamond underneath the rubble, someone to hold onto when the undertow threatened to drown her in the sea of loss, being needed, being allowed to forget herself, if only for a moment. Emma had been a life raft, and when you look at a life raft you don’t remember almost drowning, you remember being saved.
Emma looked at her, and for a moment she could see into her eyes, into the warm depths that lay beneath the icy shallows, before they glinted, turning back into impermeable reflective pools. “Well, there is one more area where we differ.”
“I can understand you not wanting to see me, enough people have felt the same, so it’s reasonable enough, but you can go back to never contacting me and pretending that I never existed after we leave. Why are you pretending not to know me?”
“I explained that. Don’t be obtuse.”
“But why would they be suspicious of you? You’re on their team. Surely some of them must have human acquaintances.”
Emma frowned. “I wonder if that’s true. Besides other people in the same profession, Tony Stark and the like, and whatever relatives haven’t rejected them, I haven’t seen evidence of even the utopian-minded X-Men interacting with humans on a personal level.” Emma smirked slightly. “What a blow to Xavier’s dream if that is true.”
“You aren’t like them.”
“And they know that.” Emma shook her head. “They’ve decided I’ve reformed enough to risk my life alongside them, but it’s like being on parole. If you slip up, they’re waiting right there to bust you.”
“I don’t think I know enough about mutant politics to understand this.”
Emma shrugged. “They don’t trust me because of what I’ve done. They have every right not to. My former associates were diametrically opposed to everything the X-Men stand for.”
“What was your group’s ideology?”
Emma laughed. “Our ideology? Power. That was all we believed in. Do you know about the Brotherhood?”
Emily frowned. “They’re the ones that are always being compared to the Black Panthers, right?”
“There are some tenuous similarities, but yes. They stood for mutant supremacy, homo superior, violence as a means towards peace. They are often spoken of as the opposite cadre to the x-men, who believe in humans and mutants living in peace, mutant abilities contributing to the advancement of society, and, of course, violence as a means towards peace.
“I was never a member of the Brotherhood, and I still find the X-Men ideology somewhat idealistic, like a single-state solution for Israel and Pakistan. My allegiance was to an un-politicized cadre. We didn’t see the point of fighting for mutant supremacy or for mutant equality because we never felt weak. Both the Brotherhood and the X-Men philosophize from a position of weakness, they want to compete with humans, to catch up and move past. But we knew that we had already won. Our power put us at the pinnacle of the hierarchy, regardless of the social environment. So we took advantage of it.” Emma sighed. “To a certain extent I still think that way. I understand that the poor deformed creatures, like the mutant victims of your serial killer, need protection, need rights, but truly powerful mutants, like myself, Erik, Charles, even Ms. Darkholme and Miss Pryde have abilities that constitute a direct threat to society as a whole. All these checks and balances that we have built, not just in government, but little things, religion and science, capitalism and labor, will fall apart. It’s almost better to just be selfish, because any ideology left unchecked leads to fascism.”
“I’ve lived in places like that. Society doesn’t just fall apart.” Countries run by a single ruler or guided by a religious elite functioned as well as any other. Sometimes they were even better. You always knew the rules and if you didn’t like them you worked around them. There was no valorization of rebellion, and less violence. If people knew their place they weren’t threatening anyone else’s.
Emma looked surprised and offended at being contradicted.
“I think we’ve survived the worst of it. What’s a more perfect incidence of a truly sociopathic mind combined with immense destructive power than Genosha. And it wasn’t Cassandra Nova’s individual power that allowed her to do that. Human-built weapons, genocide machines, did it. We’ve done it before, nuclear bombs, biological weapons, gas and fire. Society has always sought methods of self-destruction.”
“I don’t think I could survive it again.” Emma’s voice cracked, and she swiftly turned away. Emily reached out and grabbed her hand, holding it tightly, though Emma struggled to free herself. Finally she looked back, her gaze glistening.
Emily loosened her grip. “I’m sorry. I do remind you of it.”
“No.” Emma returned the clench of her hand, and then bent her fingers back, opening Emily’s palm and tracing her thumb over it. “Everything reminds me of it. Because you’re right. Fascism, genocide, and insanity are all part of our history and our future. As long as we have hierarchies of power, we have people who will abuse their power. And we cannot function without institutions of power.” She looked around at the quiet town, the trees still in the windless evening, lights in the windows. “Even this town needs institutions of power, just for incidents like this one.”
“Every day, JJ, our police liaison, gets a stack of cases this thick,” Emily spread her fingers over an inch apart. “She has to go through them and choose which series of murders most deserves our attention. Every day there are more. I understand what you mean about selfishness being less destructive than ideology. But insanity seems to be becoming more and more prevalent.”
Emma looked grim and sickened. “I like you better when you aren’t speaking.”
“I thought you didn’t like me at all.” Emily wouldn’t be surprised. She had managed to depress herself with the conversation and felt limp and useless. She wasn’t hungry anymore.
Emma winced, and Emily looked up as pain echoed in her head.
“What was that?”
“A summons for a team meeting.”
Emily rubbed her forehead. “Does it always hurt like that?”
“Only if my shields are down.” Emma frowned. “Was I linked up with you?”
“I can’t tell.”
Emma gave her a long dubious look. “We had better go,” she said, finally.
Throwing out what was left, they started to walk back to the inn. It was hard for Emily not to look at her, not to remember what it was like to knot her fingers in her hair, and press their bodies together. It was comfort, and that was what she wanted right now. She was lagging behind, and Emma kept throwing sharp glances back over her shoulder.
There was a small grove of trees on the corner, and there Emma stopped. Emily, catching up, gave her an inquisitive look, and Emma glowed with exasperation.
“You need to stop that.”
“Stop what?”
“Your shields are pancake flat. Any telepath within range could see what you are thinking as if it were written on your face.”
Emily didn’t feel apologetic. She was annoyed. “They shouldn’t look.”
“Should I?” Emma stepped into her personal space, backing her up against a tree. When Emily didn’t respond, she smiled viciously. “You wanted me to see it, didn’t you? You wanted me to do it.”
And Emma was kissing her, finally, hot and wet and open. No one kissed like Emma. No one had the finesse of just when to bite and just when to suck. No one overpowered her in the same way, or made her feel like she was being ripped apart and sewn together all at once. The tree was rough against her back, but it was nothing compared to Emma’s fingernails digging into her skin, or the heat of her body.
“Is that what you wanted?”
Startled at the sudden abandonment, Emily gasped, and then flushed in humiliation at being so easily overwhelmed. “Yeah, pretty much.”
Emma laughed and strode off towards the inn. Emily shook her head and hurried to catch up.
* * *
Scott could not shut up. He was weighing every eventuality, every moral and political gradation, and Emma was going to scream if it went on any longer.
“Can we just vote already?” Emma snapped. Everyone looked in her direction. That was a little direct, even for her.
“Um,” said Scott, uselessly. “I suppose. If everyone’s decided.”
There was a series of grunts and general nods of acknowledgement.
“All in favor of staying and assisting the FBI with the case?”
The entire team raised their hands. He looked around. “You too, Emma?”
“We’re here, aren’t we? We might as well be useful.”
“And did you see the photos of the corpses,” added Jean. “He must be very powerful to cause that much internal charring. They’ll probably need our help.”
“Then it’s settled. Good, now… room keys.” Scott looked guiltily at Logan and Hank. “I’m sorry, they’re all full up, so you two will have to share.”
Both men looked horrified. Scott handed keys to Hank, Xorn and Emma. Emma looked at hers, then smiled and tossed it to Wolvie.
“You can take mine. I’ve already found a place to sleep tonight.”
* * *
Emily opened her door, her hair loose, and dressed in a rumpled tank top and pajama bottoms, expecting a teammate with some information or complaint, and found Emma, leaning against the doorframe with a bag over her shoulder.
“I’m staying here tonight,” she said, after a long moment of running her eyes over the mussed form before her.
“Really?” Emily grinned comically. “What happened to the ‘I don’t have human friends’?”
“I’ll just have to mind wipe you before Jean gets a chance to peek.”
“Mm, good luck with that.”
“I doubt she’ll bother though, picking up random humans for fucking is much more in character for me than a long-term acquaintance with… anyone really.”
“You know, there’s quite a nice couch down in the common room, if you’re this serious about me kicking you out,” Emily commented wryly.
Emma just smiled with lowered eyelids. That expression always resembled something between a seduction and a smug wolf. “As if you could say no to this.” The door clicked shut behind her and her bag dropped to the ground.
“You’re the one who came to me.” Emily said, backing slowly towards the bed. Emma paced her, not letting her out of range.
“Well, then I must be the smart one, not wasting such an opportunity.”
“Maybe you are.” Emily let her hands rest on the backs of Emma’s arms and drift upwards. “And maybe you’ve just fallen into my trap.”
With an easy move, she locked her arms around Emma and dropped her to the bed, settling on her knees, straddling her lap. Emma laughed and propped herself up on her elbows.
“Is this one of those seduction traps? Because honestly,” Emma slid her hands behind her conqueror’s head, threading her fingers in the dark strands. “I can’t think of anywhere I’d rather be caught.”
Emily leaned down to kiss her, gently, but just a taste was never enough.
* * *
Author: Alsike
Pairing: Emily Prentiss/Emma Frost
Rating: PG-13
Summary: The members of the BAU are faced with hunting down a mutant killer. Other people may also be in pursuit. And Emily finds out that where there are mutants, divisive politics follow close behind.
Apologies: I'm sorry about the excess of philosophical debate. I wish i could say this was the only chapter with such decadence, but my characters just won't shut up.
It had been a long day with very few potential unsubs and no potential victims identified. This really was a case for old-fashioned police work, being on guard, finding witnesses, but the extent of the national parkland in the county and the low population density meant that there weren’t any witnesses and there weren’t any leads. News had spread throughout the community by word of mouth, and most people were panicked. Young people died in car accidents and it was an unbelievable tragedy. Young people were murdered and it was the sign of an apocalypse.
Emily hated taking the lead on cases. The weakest part of her profiling ability was the part that made it easy to rule out certain suspects. White male? It was an educated guess, but no more. The population of Kamas was 92.5% white, and the strength required to move the bodies to the locations that they were found in suggested male. But she could be wrong. It had to be a local, she rationalized, and young. The victims were all young.
She saw the man in the magenta sunglasses going into the office of the Kamas Inn. Were the X-Men staying here too? That was… uncomfortable.
Coming down after her shower, Emily spotted the redhead making tea in the common area.
“Hey.”
Jean looked up, and smiled politely. Emily remembered that this one was the other telepath, and stiffened her shields, but didn’t feel anything attempting to broach them.
“Hi, Agent… Prentiss, was it?”
“Yes.” Emily hesitated, but couldn’t figure out any other way to ask. “Is Emma around?”
“Emma?” Jean looked slightly stunned.
“Yes.” The woman didn’t seem to be finding an answer. “Blonde, scantily clad… irritating?”
Jean laughed. “I don’t know where she is. You know her?”
Emily winced. It was the ‘irritating’ that had given her away. “Not really. I just had a question…”
If anything Jean looked even more suspicious. “You could try me?”
Emily smiled hesitantly. “That’s okay.”
“Are you sure?”
“If you want to know what it is that badly, just rip it out. You are a telepath, aren’t you?”
Jean’s face closed at that. “You obviously know Emma. I don’t do that.”
Emily nodded, uncomfortable, and glanced out the windows, but she only spotted the hairy man smoking.
“How do you know her? Business? You’re human. I didn’t think she had any human friends.”
“Agent Prentiss,” came a sharp New England accent from the stairs. “If I didn’t know better I would say you were trading me in for more pleasant company.”
Emily turned to grin at Emma, ignoring the obvious curiosity from Jean. She had traded in the white leather fetish outfit for something more conservative, probably a good move for a rabidly Mormon town. But she still looked too bright and crisp for a place like this.
“How on earth could I miss the experience of Emma Frost eating in a town where the most prestigious restaurant serves hotdogs on its dinner menu?”
<< It seems you have utterly failed with the instructions I gave you. Are you prepared to suffer the consequences? >> Emma was a threatening presence in her consciousness.
<< Cut it out. >> Emily snapped. << She has nothing. We could have spoken on our way out of the station for all she knows. >>
<< And with your flirty little banter it’s apparent that in that exchange we set up a date? >>
<< God, what is your problem? Sometimes by random chance we are unlucky enough to run into someone we know. Why is it imperative for them to think we’ve never met? >>
<< I don’t have human friends. >>
<< Yeah, Jean mentioned as much. >>
<< You don’t understand. I don’t have human friends. I have pawns. If you come across as too friendly towards me, they’re going to poke around to make sure I didn’t do anything unethical. And then they’ll know. >>
<< Know what? >>
Instead of an answer, Emily received a barrage of images: Genosha, dead children, Emma’s tears, sex.
<< Will they think you’re weak? >>
<< They’ll know I’m weak. >>
“You wanted to consult on the case?”
It took a moment for Emily to flip conversations. Jean was still watching curiously, so she stood stiffly and tried to stay professional. “I heard it mentioned that you have a degree in psychology. I was wondering if you would share some insights on mutants and mental disease.”
“I would be honored.”
They passed Morgan on their way out. He grinned and flashed a not very veiled double thumbs up. Emma gave her a look. Emily rolled her eyes and thought pointedly about security footage in the BAU building.
Picnic tables and mosquitoes were the amenities of the local restaurants, but they were nearly empty as the frightened townspeople stayed home. Voices dissipated quickly in the open air. It was strange to be with Emma in a place like this. As professionals, as strangers again.
“You do know that there are only two police officers in this town. The group you were interviewing is mostly made up of hastily impressed forest rangers.”
Emily chuckled. “I’m not surprised. This area isn’t prepared for a serial killer. So, the police are the lieutenant and the kid that called you?”
Emma nodded, her face stern again. “I didn’t want us to come. I knew your team was likely to be here, and I didn’t want to see you again.”
That hurt. Emily walked silently for a few steps. “I don’t… I don’t understand.”
“Oh, come on. You of all people should be able to work it out. Your shields are so strong because you’ve spent your life cutting up emotions and memories, separating them out so they can’t influence your consciousness. You’ve had to do this. It’s a perfectly valid way of dealing with trauma. I would like to do the same, cut that time off, so I can move on again. You are part of that time.”
“You aren’t for me.” The glint of diamond underneath the rubble, someone to hold onto when the undertow threatened to drown her in the sea of loss, being needed, being allowed to forget herself, if only for a moment. Emma had been a life raft, and when you look at a life raft you don’t remember almost drowning, you remember being saved.
Emma looked at her, and for a moment she could see into her eyes, into the warm depths that lay beneath the icy shallows, before they glinted, turning back into impermeable reflective pools. “Well, there is one more area where we differ.”
“I can understand you not wanting to see me, enough people have felt the same, so it’s reasonable enough, but you can go back to never contacting me and pretending that I never existed after we leave. Why are you pretending not to know me?”
“I explained that. Don’t be obtuse.”
“But why would they be suspicious of you? You’re on their team. Surely some of them must have human acquaintances.”
Emma frowned. “I wonder if that’s true. Besides other people in the same profession, Tony Stark and the like, and whatever relatives haven’t rejected them, I haven’t seen evidence of even the utopian-minded X-Men interacting with humans on a personal level.” Emma smirked slightly. “What a blow to Xavier’s dream if that is true.”
“You aren’t like them.”
“And they know that.” Emma shook her head. “They’ve decided I’ve reformed enough to risk my life alongside them, but it’s like being on parole. If you slip up, they’re waiting right there to bust you.”
“I don’t think I know enough about mutant politics to understand this.”
Emma shrugged. “They don’t trust me because of what I’ve done. They have every right not to. My former associates were diametrically opposed to everything the X-Men stand for.”
“What was your group’s ideology?”
Emma laughed. “Our ideology? Power. That was all we believed in. Do you know about the Brotherhood?”
Emily frowned. “They’re the ones that are always being compared to the Black Panthers, right?”
“There are some tenuous similarities, but yes. They stood for mutant supremacy, homo superior, violence as a means towards peace. They are often spoken of as the opposite cadre to the x-men, who believe in humans and mutants living in peace, mutant abilities contributing to the advancement of society, and, of course, violence as a means towards peace.
“I was never a member of the Brotherhood, and I still find the X-Men ideology somewhat idealistic, like a single-state solution for Israel and Pakistan. My allegiance was to an un-politicized cadre. We didn’t see the point of fighting for mutant supremacy or for mutant equality because we never felt weak. Both the Brotherhood and the X-Men philosophize from a position of weakness, they want to compete with humans, to catch up and move past. But we knew that we had already won. Our power put us at the pinnacle of the hierarchy, regardless of the social environment. So we took advantage of it.” Emma sighed. “To a certain extent I still think that way. I understand that the poor deformed creatures, like the mutant victims of your serial killer, need protection, need rights, but truly powerful mutants, like myself, Erik, Charles, even Ms. Darkholme and Miss Pryde have abilities that constitute a direct threat to society as a whole. All these checks and balances that we have built, not just in government, but little things, religion and science, capitalism and labor, will fall apart. It’s almost better to just be selfish, because any ideology left unchecked leads to fascism.”
“I’ve lived in places like that. Society doesn’t just fall apart.” Countries run by a single ruler or guided by a religious elite functioned as well as any other. Sometimes they were even better. You always knew the rules and if you didn’t like them you worked around them. There was no valorization of rebellion, and less violence. If people knew their place they weren’t threatening anyone else’s.
Emma looked surprised and offended at being contradicted.
“I think we’ve survived the worst of it. What’s a more perfect incidence of a truly sociopathic mind combined with immense destructive power than Genosha. And it wasn’t Cassandra Nova’s individual power that allowed her to do that. Human-built weapons, genocide machines, did it. We’ve done it before, nuclear bombs, biological weapons, gas and fire. Society has always sought methods of self-destruction.”
“I don’t think I could survive it again.” Emma’s voice cracked, and she swiftly turned away. Emily reached out and grabbed her hand, holding it tightly, though Emma struggled to free herself. Finally she looked back, her gaze glistening.
Emily loosened her grip. “I’m sorry. I do remind you of it.”
“No.” Emma returned the clench of her hand, and then bent her fingers back, opening Emily’s palm and tracing her thumb over it. “Everything reminds me of it. Because you’re right. Fascism, genocide, and insanity are all part of our history and our future. As long as we have hierarchies of power, we have people who will abuse their power. And we cannot function without institutions of power.” She looked around at the quiet town, the trees still in the windless evening, lights in the windows. “Even this town needs institutions of power, just for incidents like this one.”
“Every day, JJ, our police liaison, gets a stack of cases this thick,” Emily spread her fingers over an inch apart. “She has to go through them and choose which series of murders most deserves our attention. Every day there are more. I understand what you mean about selfishness being less destructive than ideology. But insanity seems to be becoming more and more prevalent.”
Emma looked grim and sickened. “I like you better when you aren’t speaking.”
“I thought you didn’t like me at all.” Emily wouldn’t be surprised. She had managed to depress herself with the conversation and felt limp and useless. She wasn’t hungry anymore.
Emma winced, and Emily looked up as pain echoed in her head.
“What was that?”
“A summons for a team meeting.”
Emily rubbed her forehead. “Does it always hurt like that?”
“Only if my shields are down.” Emma frowned. “Was I linked up with you?”
“I can’t tell.”
Emma gave her a long dubious look. “We had better go,” she said, finally.
Throwing out what was left, they started to walk back to the inn. It was hard for Emily not to look at her, not to remember what it was like to knot her fingers in her hair, and press their bodies together. It was comfort, and that was what she wanted right now. She was lagging behind, and Emma kept throwing sharp glances back over her shoulder.
There was a small grove of trees on the corner, and there Emma stopped. Emily, catching up, gave her an inquisitive look, and Emma glowed with exasperation.
“You need to stop that.”
“Stop what?”
“Your shields are pancake flat. Any telepath within range could see what you are thinking as if it were written on your face.”
Emily didn’t feel apologetic. She was annoyed. “They shouldn’t look.”
“Should I?” Emma stepped into her personal space, backing her up against a tree. When Emily didn’t respond, she smiled viciously. “You wanted me to see it, didn’t you? You wanted me to do it.”
And Emma was kissing her, finally, hot and wet and open. No one kissed like Emma. No one had the finesse of just when to bite and just when to suck. No one overpowered her in the same way, or made her feel like she was being ripped apart and sewn together all at once. The tree was rough against her back, but it was nothing compared to Emma’s fingernails digging into her skin, or the heat of her body.
“Is that what you wanted?”
Startled at the sudden abandonment, Emily gasped, and then flushed in humiliation at being so easily overwhelmed. “Yeah, pretty much.”
Emma laughed and strode off towards the inn. Emily shook her head and hurried to catch up.
* * *
Scott could not shut up. He was weighing every eventuality, every moral and political gradation, and Emma was going to scream if it went on any longer.
“Can we just vote already?” Emma snapped. Everyone looked in her direction. That was a little direct, even for her.
“Um,” said Scott, uselessly. “I suppose. If everyone’s decided.”
There was a series of grunts and general nods of acknowledgement.
“All in favor of staying and assisting the FBI with the case?”
The entire team raised their hands. He looked around. “You too, Emma?”
“We’re here, aren’t we? We might as well be useful.”
“And did you see the photos of the corpses,” added Jean. “He must be very powerful to cause that much internal charring. They’ll probably need our help.”
“Then it’s settled. Good, now… room keys.” Scott looked guiltily at Logan and Hank. “I’m sorry, they’re all full up, so you two will have to share.”
Both men looked horrified. Scott handed keys to Hank, Xorn and Emma. Emma looked at hers, then smiled and tossed it to Wolvie.
“You can take mine. I’ve already found a place to sleep tonight.”
* * *
Emily opened her door, her hair loose, and dressed in a rumpled tank top and pajama bottoms, expecting a teammate with some information or complaint, and found Emma, leaning against the doorframe with a bag over her shoulder.
“I’m staying here tonight,” she said, after a long moment of running her eyes over the mussed form before her.
“Really?” Emily grinned comically. “What happened to the ‘I don’t have human friends’?”
“I’ll just have to mind wipe you before Jean gets a chance to peek.”
“Mm, good luck with that.”
“I doubt she’ll bother though, picking up random humans for fucking is much more in character for me than a long-term acquaintance with… anyone really.”
“You know, there’s quite a nice couch down in the common room, if you’re this serious about me kicking you out,” Emily commented wryly.
Emma just smiled with lowered eyelids. That expression always resembled something between a seduction and a smug wolf. “As if you could say no to this.” The door clicked shut behind her and her bag dropped to the ground.
“You’re the one who came to me.” Emily said, backing slowly towards the bed. Emma paced her, not letting her out of range.
“Well, then I must be the smart one, not wasting such an opportunity.”
“Maybe you are.” Emily let her hands rest on the backs of Emma’s arms and drift upwards. “And maybe you’ve just fallen into my trap.”
With an easy move, she locked her arms around Emma and dropped her to the bed, settling on her knees, straddling her lap. Emma laughed and propped herself up on her elbows.
“Is this one of those seduction traps? Because honestly,” Emma slid her hands behind her conqueror’s head, threading her fingers in the dark strands. “I can’t think of anywhere I’d rather be caught.”
Emily leaned down to kiss her, gently, but just a taste was never enough.
* * *