whose boots, whose bed

by lise

"I'm not going to allow this, Katherine."

"Oh, you're not going to allow it, are you?" I spun around, already zipping my jeans up and trying to find my shoes under the bed. "Just because we're fucking, Emma, doesn't mean you have a say here."

"Your shoes are by the door, and--" Emma hesitated. "That was a very crude thing to say."

"Maybe I'm feeling crude." Somewhere out in her driveway, there's a car, that I drove here, that I can drive away from here. "You never give me a chance to be."

She sighed delicately, ankles crossed under twelve hundred dollar sheets, legs and body naked to the chilly air. "We are not going to stop arguing about this to start arguing about that, Katherine."

I had to sit on the bed to do my boots up. "Fine. How about this-- I'll stop arguing, and you can just scan my thoughts, change them to suit you, and then I can go home."

"You know I've never--"

"Do I."

She sat up a little more, and absently flipped a piece of blond hair between her fingers. It was a sign of irritation, one of the only ones Emma Frost allowed herself. "Yes, you know I have never altered your thoughts, Kitty."

I paused in doing up my laces. "How?"

A note of that irritation crept into her voice. "If I were to alter you, would I really create a personality that would argue so wholeheartedly and so stubbornly with me?"

It was logical. I resented how logical it was. "Maybe."

"That's childish, and if there's one thing that confounds me more than your stubborness it's your childishness, Katherine. Stop it."

Somewhen, with her even tone and her mildly disapproving attitude, Emma had actually gotten me to calm down and start seeing her side of things a little bit-- something I resented even more than her use of logic just a few moments before. "Emma, I'm not being ridiculous."

"Katherine, what you're suggesting is tantamount to occupational suicide."

I laughed, and slouched down on the bed, hands coming up to cover my face. "We're a family of outcasts, Emma. Why should this be different?"

She leaned forward, to place a hand on my shoulder. I stared at the floor through my fingers, sitting on the side of her bed, and then rubbed my eyes. She gave me a minute to compose myself, and then removed her manicured hand. "Because it will be, and we both know it. Even Sean would be questioned, carrying on a relationship with me, and that would be a heterosexual one."

I shifted closer to her, getting more comfortable on her covers. "We aren't getting married, though. I really don't think they'll be that unforgiving."

"You forget," she said, and this time there was real anger in her voice. "There is nothing for anyone to forgive, here."

I answered her softly, "I didn't forget that."

She sighed, and tucked a piece of my hair behind my ear, stroking my neck before she leaned back on her expanse of pillows. "What is it you want? Do you want to be able to say you enjoy sex with a woman? Having myself as proof of that is unnecessary, darling."

I grinned. "You called me a pet name."

She smiled back. "I thought we were arguing about the wisdom of you coming out to your peers, not my choice of affectionate phrasing."

"I'm flexible."

She uncrossed her ankles, and I watched the smooth sheets ripple from the movement, like white chocolate. "I know you're flexible. It's part of your beauty." Emma held a hand up as I opened my mouth. "And please, don't argue with me. I pay few enough compliments that you may take them in good grace."

"Thank you." I picked up one of her hands and kissed the fingertip, then put it down again gently. "Emma. Do you not want me to do this because you don't want people to know?"

She tilted her head. "That I enjoy being with you." I nodded. "Katherine, lesbianism is not the most outrageous thing I've been accused of in bed by far, you know."

My grin turned wry, but it still didn't answer my question. "Then, why are you against me telling the team what's going on?"

Emma tends not to lie unless it gets her somewhere. She'll manipulate things and she'll say miles with her silences, but flat-out lies, I've found, are rare. Rarer, anyway. She looked me in the eyes, and answered, "Because, the only reason you should tell your team anything about your personal life is if you want to, Katherine, not because you feel compelled. If you want to come out to them, then do. If not," and her tone was gentler, "Then it's simply none of their business."

I hesitated. "You don't think I'd be hiding?"

She snorted. "I don't know if you're capable, really."

"Of what?"

Her face was studiously blank. "Hiding."

I sat up, and put my hands on my hips. "You're teasing me!"

Her mouth twitched. "Maybe."

"No, I recognise teasing when I see it." I grinned. "Imagine that. Emma Frost, teasing."

She kicked the sheet off, eyebrows raising as she replied, "Yes, well, I'm sure Angelo would be surprised to know that I have a fondness for ice cream in bed."

I kicked off my boots, and let my eyes slide up her bare stomach, past full breasts and up to her face, mouth quirked up as if she was sharing a secret joke. I threw my pants back on the floor, and got under the sheets myself. "Emma, I don't think that's the way he'd see it."

She brushed the hair from my face, and I grabbed her hand, leaning in for a kiss. Right before our lips met, she murmured, "Yes, well. Angelo has an active imagination."

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