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Love is not something that everyone finds easy to show, or to find. But me... I... well, I love it. :3 To show that, this series of short, single-scene stories is all about the many aspects of love.

Love Is... Understanding that not everything is perfect.

"Dinner? You mean... just dinner?"

Emma turned a stern gaze toward Martin, furrowing her brow as she heard the disheartening tone behind the equally disheartening answer to her question. She really enjoyed the rare occasions on which she got to meet up with her old high school friends, but ever since their first meeting as a couple with these particular friends the collie had always seemed less than amiable towards them, for reasons she still could not bring herself to understand.

"Dinner, then I thought we'd probably do something social with them. Go out to a bar, or maybe just stay in and chat with them. I haven't managed to see them in almost three months. We'll have a lot of catching up to do! Why? Are you covering a shift Saturday evening?"

The male's eyes rolled in what he thought was a playful fashion. Had he seen the annoyance flashing in his lover's own, he might not have uttered the remark which escaped him next.

"If you'd given me more warning, I would have tried to..."

Folding her arms into a tight knot across her chest, the vixen glared piercingly at Martin.

"You would have tried what, exactly? To get a shift at work just so you could avoid spending an evening with me and my friends?!"

Martin sighed. He hadn't wanted to be quite so blunt, but it seemed that Emma wasn't going to let him pass this off lightly. She was fiercely loyal to those she cared for, and he respected that about her to the ends of the earth! But because of that the vixen clearly found it hard to accept what Martin himself had known from the very first time he met this pair of his girlfriend's old school chums. They were her friends, not his. And while they weren't bad people at all, Martin simply wasn't that fond of them! He was sure that in high-school they'd been great friends to have, but to meet them now, some four years on from when they and Emma had graduated... he wondered if even she herself quite found them as humorous and interesting to be around as they had been then. Or if, perhaps, they were just friends because they'd been friends years before.

"Sorry Emmy, but... you get what I mean, don't you? I just don't think I need to go with you every time you meet up with your friends. To be honest... I don't really enjoy their company that much. They're always talking about their jobs, gossiping about co-workers and stuff like that. Spending an evening with them, to me it feels like spending an evening listening to someone reading one of those 'celebrity news' magazines; the ones that go on and on about who's popular, who's pregnant and who's flat broke this week! Only instead of B list celebrities' shopping lists, it's about the bad hair-style of some woman they saw at the water cooler!"

Turning away from Martin rather sharply, Emma paced across the living room and back again. She repeated the circuit several times, arms still folded and gaze downcast. She was brewing for something, though quite what her partner dared not speculate. Back and forth across the carpet the vixen trod, lightly and yet with a deliberate solemnity to each step. It seemed to Martin like she might well keep on pacing either until he relented and agreed to go, or until it was time to actually go and meet them in four days time and he found himself without an excuse or alibi to beg an absence from proceedings!

"I just... I don't get it, Martin. Why can't you do this for me?"

Turning his head up to the heavens and raising his arms in exasperation, the male let out a dry burst of laughter. Emma glared at him, but after her latest comment the collie really didn't care.

"Jesus Christ Emmy, what do you want me to say? That I'll go along, hating every minute of time we spend with them but pretending; smirking along with their stupid stories and nodding politely whenever they punctuate it with one of their delightful 'Yanno's'? I'm trying to say that I don't want to go... that I don't want to see them, or know them, or be involved with them. So don't ask me to do this for you... don't use that bullshit 'we're a couple so we have to make sacrifices for one another' line on me, because I would never make you go to a party or hang out with people you really weren't comfortable spending time with. Okay?! Never!"

From across the living room which suddenly felt far bigger than its dimensions declared, Martin and Emma looked at each other with equal frustration and hot headed anger. Neither one could believe how stubborn and foolish the other was being, and both were certain that they were in the right!

"You've never liked socialising as much as me... and I get that, really I do. I enjoy spending a lot of time with just the two of us too! At least, normally I do. Right now though I don't think I can even stand to be in the same room as you, Martin. Maybe I should go meet my friends alone. Maybe I should go out and have the time of my life, knowing that you're just gonna be sitting at home with absolutely nothing to do. No fun. No friends. No fucking life outside this house. How about that?"

Emma was too angry to feel badly about what she was saying. It was as though she'd just been waiting for a chance to say these things, like the feelings currently coursing through her had been festering deeply in her heart long before this particular day and this peculiar fight which had sprung up within it. Never mind that until today she'd barely given a thought to Martin's supposed lack of sociability, or cared that he'd never been particularly enthused about meeting old friends, be they hers or even his own. All that mattered right then and there was her rage, and the continued fuelling of the antagonistic fires which it was so easily causing to burn.

Her boyfriend meanwhile could only fight back against this seemingly relentless torrent of abuse. To the collie there was no good reason for Emma to be annoyed by any of these things, and her treating it so seriously was making him want to defend himself all the more. It didn't matter that her cruel and hurtful comments were coming from nowhere, only that he could not let them go unanswered. Thus his response was as bristling and defensive a series of blows as the male could have possibly mustered.

"Jesus Christ Emmy, excuse me for loving you! I mean, for fuck's sake... it's not like I don't have friends. I just don't put those friends before the needs of my goddamn girlfriend. When's the last time I had to cancel plans with you for some football match, or a night of beer and poker? When's the last time I had the day of work but you still came home to find the house a mess, and a note saying I'd gone out to a bar!?"

Cutting in, Emma countered her lover's defence explosively.

"Oh yes, how stupid of me! How selfish to automatically expect common courtesies from the man who says that he loves me. Clearly I should be both proud and privileged when you're behaving like anything but a complete and total ass!"

That was more than Martin could stand. He let slip a loud, choking laugh and threw his hands up into the air in a gesture of absolute surrender.

"No, of course! I forgot you demand perfection at ever goddamn turn. I dunno how I managed that, since you've ridden me for it ever since we started dating. Everything we do... everything I do for you, you're so fucking quick to pick on the slightest little fault. But if it goes perfectly... is that a job well done on my part? No! It's just Queen Emma getting the treatment she fucking deserves! All hail Queen Emma, out of whose ass the sunlight doth fucking shine!"

Tears flew from Emma's eyes as she started towards the living room door, barging roughly past Martin on the way out.

"Fuck you Martin! You lonely piece of shit!"

Stumbling backwards past the coffee table as Emma shoved him aside, Martin ducked and scooped up the book, The Hobbit, which he'd been reading in his spare time over the last few days. Without thinking he heaved it at the door just as the vixen passed through it, and the heavy hardback jarred loudly against the wooden door.

"Go and laugh with your precious friends then! Tell them all about what a miserable goddamned life you live with me; let them tell you what a precious fucking princess you are compared to all those bitches at their office!"

Standing rigid, chest heaving and his entire body quivering, Martin didn't move until he heard the front door swing violently open and then slam shut again, the entire house seeming to shake with the force of its closure. Soon after the sound of the garage door's electric motor swinging up cut through the tense, otherwise silent air, and then the roar of a car engine backing rather aggressively out it seemed to fill the collie's ears. Then Emma was gone; gone to meet the very same precious friends who just fifteen minutes before had been but a slight inconvenience to Martin's day.

The collie finally moved about a minute later, stiffly walking over to the living room door and picking up the book from where it lay, open and slightly crumpled at the first few pages, on the floor. As he picked it up he was reminded of why he was reading it anyway, because Emma had told him that he should. For some reason this filled him with such a sense of anger and betrayal, as though her telling him to read it had been some form of manipulation on her part! With a sharp growl he tossed the book again, straight at the ground. From there he picked it up once more, and this time hurled it straight across the room where it came to rest in the padded safety of an armchair.

Fuming, Martin stood staring at the book which until recently he had actually been enjoying a great deal. Adrenaline and anger pumped through his system synonymously, and under his breath he continued to growl softly.

Alone in the silence of the house he and his girlfriend shared, the collie cursed Emma. He cursed her damnable friends for wanting to meet up, he cursed himself for letting Emma wrap him around her little finger so easily until now... and he cursed his heart, for already asking if he'd really needed to react so strongly to her accusations, even if she had been out of line.

At that moment, love was the very last thing on Martin's mind.

By Jeeves