Chapter Text
Prentiss never considered herself to be a typical boss. She never took a training course, never read the ‘how to’ manuals of great leaders, and she actively loathed every teambuilding seminar she was ever forced to attend. Up until the moment she accepted her position at the London Interpol office, she thought the idea of anyone looking to her for guidance as dangerously misguided. After all, if there were a right way to solve a problem she’d find another, far more problematic one and choose it instead, no matter the cost. And when she became a boss to her friends she felt even less appropriate; these people knew all of her secrets.
So when it came right down to it there were a lot of reasons why she blurred the lines with Reid. She couldn’t distance herself as Hotch had because they’d always been friends, and she couldn’t enforce a proper superior/subordinate relationship because they’d always been closer than that. And she’d always been overprotective of him - he was so habitually alone and absolutely terrible at asking for help, and she was constantly trying to change that. When he came to her after their case in Yakima and told her he needed to take care of his mom and then choked up as he confessed that he didn’t know what to do, she became distraught. He was finally almost asking for something, but she found herself hesitating. She was his unit chief now - there were suddenly borders between them that she didn’t know if she could cross. Squeezing his knotted fingers and watching him struggle to hold himself together on the quiet plane, she wrestled with the right things to say.
And then he was gone, for weeks and weeks with no contact, and she couldn’t banish his glassy-eyed fear and fragile isolation from her mind. She had things to do, a team to run, but at every available opportunity her thoughts drifted and she wondered if it was ‘proper’ of her to want to interfere. In the end, it was a casual comment by Garcia at a briefing about something that “Reid would know” which pushed her into acting. Everyone had their assignments and she slid back to her office, hesitating momentarily before picking up the phone and dialing the number she knew by heart.
“Spencer Reid.” He sounded a million miles away and exhausted, and it was only ten in the morning in Houston.
“Hey there, nerd,” she said too brightly and then wondered if she was interrupting something awful with her forced cheerfulness. “Just checking in to see how you’re doing.”
“Oh… hey Emily,” he took a breath she could hear. “Everything’s fine here.”
Jesus. She rolled her eyes at his voice over the phone. “You’re such a terrible liar, Reid. Still. I think you need to practice more.”
“Okay,” he sighed as if he were taking her suggestion under advisement.
“Hey man,” she tried again, softer this time. “What’s happening down there?”
“She’s… it’s really bad, Emily.”
Her forced playfulness evaporated at his quiet devastation. “Reid, is she-”
“It’s a 50/50 chance that she’ll recognize me from one day to the next.” His voice strained as if he were cutting off any emotional response before it got away on him. “And the Alzheimer’s regimen she’s on means that they’ve had to cut back on some of her mood stabilizers, so when she becomes confused she immediately gets paranoid and it triggers a meltdown. It’s like walking over cracked glass all day, every day.”
“Reid…” she whispered into the phone, wanting more than anything to pull him into a hug and tell him things would be all right, as meaningless as that statement was.
“Even if I spend the whole day by her side, sometimes she slips away from me. She’ll turn in the middle of a conversation and ask me when she can call her son.” His voice cut out bluntly and Prentiss assumed he covered the phone for a second, then he returned and sounded smaller, diminished. “I don’t know what to do with her now. I don’t know if she should stay here, or go back to Bennington… I don’t know what’s best…”
At the time she considered her impulse to go to him professional. A member of her team was in trouble and needed a hand. Her friend was suffering and she wanted to ease it. But when she looked back on everything, she thought that the moment she stood in front of her desk and wondered how soon she could get on a flight to Houston, it was the beginning of her irreversibly stepping over a line. She pushed aside the trappings of the position she’d worked her whole life to attain without a second thought as she straightened her spine, squared her shoulders, and felt the confidence of a plan falling into place.
“I’m coming down there.”
“Emily, no…” he sputtered.
“No arguments, Reid. It’ll just be me but we’ll figure this out together.” She was dumping things from her desk into her bag as she spoke. Just a day or two. The Unit could live without her for that long. “I’ll be there soon. Call you when I land.”
Then she hung up before he could object any further.
----
The treatment center in Houston wasn’t what she’d expected. It was less a hospital and more like a retirement home. Most of the patients didn’t wear gowns and weren’t confined to sterile, blank rooms watched over by frightening machinery. Prentiss supposed that was something. She found Reid sitting in a large day room with Diana looking out through a wall of windows at the groomed gardens beyond them. Reid was hunched, curled close to his mother, watching her as she watched nothing in particular outside. She wore a small smile, but his face was a study in guarded worry, forehead creased, mouth drawn down, and with the deepest circles she’d ever seen under his eyes. He caught the movement of her approaching and looked up. For a second, the worry lifted and he smiled. He stood and met her in two, long strides.
“Hi,” he mumbled as she dipped in for a quick hug.
“Hey,” she breezed. “How’s it going?”
“Today’s not bad,” he whispered quickly. “Just try and roll with it if she engages with you.”
They both turned and Diana was watching them curiously. “Who’s this?”
“Mom, this is Emily Prentiss. You met her once but it was a long time ago. You might not remember.”
Diana frowned.
“It’s good to see you again, Professor Reid,” Prentiss added and then waved. Diana continued to stare without much affect or recognition.
“Ummm, Mom?”
“Of course I know who she is,” Diana snapped at Reid before turning to address Prentiss. “You’re the one he likes.”
“I’m sorry, the one who likes?” Prentiss asked when Reid didn’t do anything.
“My son,” Diana beamed. “I have a son, you know. He’s so clever. One day he’s going to be a great man… a great man… but he’s still just a boy.”
Prentiss blinked, a little unsure of how to proceed. Next to her, Reid looked as if he’d been turned to stone at the exact moment he’d been told the worst news of his life.
“My son doesn’t have many friends. Because he’s special, you see. But he’s mentioned ‘Emily’ many times. He says you make him feel ‘normal’. I don’t see the value in reaffirming mediocrity, but Spencer needs friends, so…” Diana looked at Prentiss again, more critically this time, and then gave her a firm glare. “You seem too old to be his friend. He’s just a boy. Why would you want to befriend a child? You wouldn’t hurt him, would you? I don’t espouse violence but I’ll kill you with my bare hands if you harm him…”
“Mom…”
“I’d never hurt Spencer, Professor Reid. Never.” Diana seemed to feel the sincerity behind Prentiss’s statement and relaxed a little. “It’s true he’s younger than me, but we’ve been friends for a long time. He doesn’t hold it against me.”
“Well, he wouldn’t. Age is inconsequential when minds and spirits are kindred. I’ve always told him that. I tell him that one day he’ll be an adult and no one will dismiss him because he’s small, or too thin…”
“Mom…”
“…one day the only thing that will matter is his mind and everyone will want him then.” Diana smiled and rocked gently in her chair.
“Mom, I’m right here.”
Prentiss turned and saw Reid leaning towards his mother with his hand on his chest, anguish etched into his features.
“Pardon?” Diana blinked at him.
“Mom, it’s me. I’m Spencer.”
She looked him over and then shook her head, smiling benevolently. “Oh, my dear boy, no you aren’t. My son is nine and you’re enormous.”
Prentiss watched Reid quietly falter under Diana’s conclusion. There was a second when his face twitched as if he couldn’t hold back the sorrow any longer, and then it was gone, replaced by a frighteningly cheerful mask. Prentiss’s chest tightened as she saw it play out and wondered how the hell he’d kept it together for as long as he had.
“You’re right,” he said. “Sorry. Sometimes I get confused. I’m looking for my mom. She’s a little like you.”
“Well, you’re in the right place then, dear,” Diana chuckled. “We’re all confused here. Who is your mother? Perhaps I know her… I’m Diana, by the way.”
“Oh, umm… I’m…” Reid stared at the hand his mother offered him and went a little blank.
“This is Aaron,” Prentiss stepped in and stepped up beside him, bolstering his sagging frame with hers. “He’s a friend of mine as well.”
Diana shook Reid’s hand and he looked shell-shocked by it, and then Prentiss nudged him back down into the chair next to his mother.
“Nice to meet you, Aaron. Do you know my Spencer? If you’re both friends with Emily…”
“Yes,” Reid said distantly. “Yes, I know him.”
“Well, that’s fortuitous. If we wait long enough he’s sure to come by. He’s around here somewhere…”
Diana craned her body, searching for sight of her son. Prentiss peered down at Reid, heart in her throat and a terrible sinking sensation in her gut, but he was looking out the window at the gardens with the same disconnected gaze that his mother had worn minutes before.
----
Prentiss felt that the day couldn’t end soon enough. She had almost no experience with the mentally altered, and none at all with the infirmed. By the time they got Diana settled in her room for the night, Prentiss was tired beyond all reason for someone who’d basically spent the day sitting and listening. She’d only withstood one day of this. Reid had been there for six weeks. She looked on his wiry, slouched frame as they walked to the parking lot and saw invisible steeliness to it now. If his emotional resiliency had muscles, he’d resemble an Olympic weightlifter.
Diana spent most of their visit talking about Spencer like an absent child. Reid said almost nothing in response, alternating between gazing out the window and watching his mother with undisguised sadness. It snapped something irrevocably in Prentiss: Reid’s love for his mom was so obvious, so replete, but he was watching it leech away leaving him alone in their memories together. Prentiss knew what he was thinking. He was wondering who he’d be without her eyes telling him with their recognition and unrestrained pride. For all of her instability, Diana was Reid’s touchstone and one day very soon she simply wouldn’t be there. Reid would be untethered then, and that probably frightened him beyond reason.
In the middle of one of Diana’s meandering recollections, she turned to Reid and said, “Spencer, you’re far too thin. Are you eating properly?”
Reid lit up then and Prentiss could almost imagine the same expression on him as a gawky kid leaning towards the warmth of his mother’s concern like a fragile sprout. Prentiss bit her tongue hard to give herself something else to focus on and to keep the blurriness at bay in her eyes. Then Diana turned to her.
“Emily, why aren’t you feeding him?”
Prentiss blinked and then miraculously, she heard Reid chuckle beside her. “Mom, she’s my friend. She’s not responsible for that.”
“Yes, Spencer, she’s your girlfriend. She should take an interest in your nutrition.”
Then it was Prentiss who laughed in a hearty, rolling guffaw that quirked Diana’s eyebrows. When she looked over at Reid to share the moment, he was only smiling, his cheeks bright and his eyes flicking to and away from her quickly.
“Mom…” he muttered and Diana swatted him gently on the knee with a murmured ‘silly boy’.
It was as normal as they managed to get but it didn’t last. Less than ten minutes later Diana was actively looking for her son again and Reid slouched back into his chair, his strings cut. As dinner time arrived Diana became agitated that Spencer hadn’t appeared yet. When Reid tried to settle her, she struck out, unfurling a paranoid theory with escalating desperation that government agents had kidnapped him to use him for his ‘specialness’. When Reid tried to usher her back to her room, Diana screamed, “You aren’t my son! You’re part of it, aren’t you? You’ve been distracting me while they took him. He needs me - he’s only nine - he needs me!”
Orderlies appeared and gently manhandled her back to her suite as Reid stood and watched them go with tears in his eyes. She screamed “He needs me!” until she was shut into her room, and then a minute later a man in a white coat appeared and spent some time murmuring to Reid as he nodded listlessly. Prentiss didn’t know what to do. The whole scene had been deeply unsettling, but everyone around her took it in stride, even the other patients, as if this level of anxiety were simply to be expected around there. When the doctor walked away, she shuffled up beside Reid unsure of what to say or do. He didn’t react, just looking down at his ratty sneakers instead.
“Hey,” she said eventually. “Are you hungry?”
“I don’t know,” he muttered after a long pause.
“Well, let’s try it and see, okay?” She slid a hand around the crook of his elbow and he looked up at her, eyes rimmed in red and face too pale to be healthy. His mouth thinned to a tight, white slash and then he nodded. She pushed them towards the parking lot and away from that awful place as quickly as she could without running.
Dinner had been a disaster. The restaurant was too loud and bright, and Reid just slunk down into the banquette and stared at his burger rather than eating it. Prentiss let it go on for about twenty minutes and then got exasperated at her own uselessness. She was supposed to be helping, not piling onto his misery. She tossed her napkin onto the table angrily and growled above the din of the other patrons. The reaction caused Reid to look up at her cautiously.
“What?”
“New plan,” she grumbled as she waved their waiter over and told him to wrap everything up to go.
They ended up in Reid’s hotel room, because she hadn’t managed to check in yet, and eating their greasy, half-cooled meals with a mix of fervor and obligation. But, he ate, so Prentiss considered it a win. She picked a fry from his take-out container and pushed it through a mixture of burger grease and mayonnaise just to get a rise out of him. He scrunched his face in quiet disgust and then smiled, and she felt as if she’d vanquished something terrible with that small expression. She’d been thinking about how to launch into the conversation that they had to have, but she fretted over it. He seemed so fragile now - she worried that even having a frank discussion might break what remained of his resolve. She didn’t want to be the one who did that to him, taking that last gasp of dignity away. Munching the fry, she decided that they’d built their friendship on bluntness so she shouldn’t offer anything less now.
“Today was…” she began quietly.
“Awful. Yeah, I know,” he finished, leaning his elbows on his knees and letting his wrists dangle. “Sorry. I tried to warn you.”
“No, that’s not what I meant. I mean, yes, it was awful, but I’m not sorry I was there, Reid. It was important to see what you’ve been dealing with these last six weeks.”
He sighed and seemed to sink deeper into the long couch that they were both sitting on. “The treatment isn’t working, and the drugs are making her schizophrenia worse. I’m not sure there’s any value in being here anymore.”
He leaned back into the sofa and scrubbed his hands roughly over his face. Prentiss leaned back too just to be close so that he wouldn’t have to work hard at telling her any of this.
“Well, what are the alternatives?” she asked.
He rolled his head to face her and just stared for a long minute. She had no idea what he was thinking and that made her uneasy.
“There aren’t any, really. I take her back to Bennington.”
“Can she still receive the treatment there?”
“Yeah, but they aren’t specialists in Alzheimer’s. They can follow the prescription instructions and titrate as needed, but they aren’t well versed in the changes that need to be anticipated. And…” His voice trailed off.
“And what?”
“And I’m not sure that I want her to continue with the treatment anyway.” He almost whispered it and looked absolutely terrified as he admitted it. Prentiss’s congealed dinner lurched in her stomach ominously at what that expression implied. He swallowed hard as he watched her, and she did the same before she could find her voice again. She huddled a little closer, as if they were sharing horrible secrets together.
“Explain that,” she whispered and reached for his hand. His fingers curled through hers instantly, going white at the joints with tension. “Tell me why, Spencer, because… because that sounds like giving up and you don’t give up. Ever.”
He took a deep, wet-sounding breath. “You saw her today. She’s disconnected from reality most of the time now. Today was good in the sense that she was calm for a considerable amount of time.”
He rolled a little so that he was lying on his side against the couch facing her, as if curling towards some shelter he imagined she had. His eyes flicked to their hands quickly and then up to her face, and man, did he look tired.
“Most days she’s not calm. She fixates on something she’s lost - most of the time it’s me - and she spirals. That’s the schizophrenia more than the dementia. If she’s taken off the Alzheimer’s meds, or they are scaled back to the bare minimum, we can increase her mood stabilizers again. It means… it means that we sacrifice stalling the cognitive decline in favor of her quality of life.”
He closed his eyes tightly and to Prentiss’s alarm, a tear squeezed out and rolled down his cheek into the fabric of the cushions beneath. Her mouth fell open and she couldn’t catch her breath. But when he spoke again, his tone was quiet and even.
“This is excruciating for me. This… vicious whittling away of what’s left of her… but it’s much, much harder for her to withstand. I thought… I thought it might be gentle, like a slow fading of daylight, that I’d be the one who suffered, not her.”
Another tear followed the first and then he made a soft sniffling sound that broke her utterly. She reached out without thinking and brushed away his tear. He stared at her for a moment and then leaned into the warmth of her hand against his cheek.
“She’s constantly anxious, Emily. She’s terrified most of the time, and she can’t even get a handle on it like she did with the schizophrenic hallucinations because her ability to distinguish fantasy and reality has too many holes in it now. I… I can’t watch her go through this… I can’t do this to her when…”
He closed his eyes, shook his head and tried to bury it in her hand.
“Can’t do this to her when - what, Spence?” She thought she knew what the end of his sentence would be, but he needed to say it aloud.
“I can’t do this to her w-when she’s not going to get any better,” he sobbed, and she pulled him into her shoulder and rocked them a little.
“This fucking disease,” he whimpered angrily into her as his other hand grasped the side of her blouse and pulled. “It’s taking everything I l-love about her from me. It’s making me watch. And when it’s done with that, it’s going to kill her. There’s nothing I can do about it… nothing. I’m useless.”
“Shhhh, Spence…” She rocked them more urgently, her own tears falling into his hair as she tucked him under her chin. The couch springs groaned under them in a mournful rhythm and it was the only sound in the room for a long time until she could marshal her voice again. “You’re not useless, Spence. You’ve done everything you can.”
“Have I?” He pulled back and his face was red and wet and creased with anger. “I avoided her for a long time after she was diagnosed. I buried myself in treatments and studies, research and medical journals… How much time did I lose with her? Was she scared when she understood what would happen to her and I wasn’t there? Rossi called me on it, you know. He said I was focusing on the wrong things. Then I used the work as an excuse…”
It all tumbled out of him viciously and too fast. How long had he blamed himself for this? Had he been here withstanding the double lash of Diana’s deterioration and his regret the entire time? She cupped his jaw and held it too tightly, staring him and his molten self-loathing down.
“Spencer Reid, no one is goddamned perfect,” she growled and sniffled at the same time. “You were doing this alone and there was no one there to point out the flaws in your strategy.”
His eyebrows lowered dangerously as she criticized him, but fuck it, he already knew he’d made mistakes. She wasn’t going to pull her punches now.
“Are you going to spend the time that’s left beating the shit outta yourself for the things you didn’t do? Because I’m here now and I’m telling you that’s another mistake.”
“I can’t… I can’t just let it go…” he whispered, his anger receding slightly.
“I know!” She almost laughed because she knew his absurd tendencies almost as well as her own. “I know you, idiot! But there will be time for that later. Right now - today - you have to push that aside and think about what you really want for her.”
“Compartmentalize,” he hiccupped.
“It’s been enabling this broad for decades. It’s really useful, I’m telling you.” She’d been aiming for a moment of levity but his brow creased as if it were instruction instead.
“I… I want her to be content, Em. I can’t have the end of her life be one endless trauma.” He swallowed hard and stared at her with an unfiltered plea for validation. Prentiss felt a dangerous shift in power in her direction and instantly knew it was wrong.
“Do you want… I mean, if you decide to take her off the dementia treatment, won’t that mean she’ll decline faster?”
“Yes.” His voice was clear. He knew exactly what it meant. They were discussing the acceleration of Diana Reid’s death, and it left Prentiss nauseated that the woman didn’t have a say in any of this.
“Can you live with that?” she murmured, not sure if she could if their positions were reversed.
“I don’t know,” he whispered. “But it’s the right call. Isn’t it?”
“Oh Spence,” she whimpered and pulled their foreheads together. “I can’t tell you what to do here.”
“Yeah, I guess I knew that,” he gulped and pushed against her more urgently. “But… am I a monster if I do this?”
“No! Jesus Christ, no…”
She gripped him even closer, fingers cramping from the effort and trying to avoid blubbering like a toddler. They’d never been as close as this before. It felt natural for her to offer it, but it was also completely foreign to them. A tiny part of her mind was sending out panicked messages for her to place some distance between them, that there seemed to be a sign blinking on and off above them that simply read ‘DANGER’. But then a tear slid down her face and his thumb was there to brush it away. Then it lingered and traced circles lightly across her cheek, and something warm coiled through her that she hadn’t felt in a long time. So much for compartmentalizing, or not blubbering…
“Why are you crying?” he whispered, and they were so close his breath breezed over her lips.
“Because you’re hurting,” she sighed, watching her fingers stroke the lines on his face. The divot at his temple, the sharp cheek bone, the zygomatic dip, the surprisingly solid jawline… “And I’m finding that… that’s very painful for me.”
His eyes widened and something new and indescribable washed over him. For a split second the circles under his eyes didn’t seem so dark, the washed out, haunted expression seemed to fade slightly. His mouth fell open in a tiny O and then his eyes flicked to her lips and away. The coiled something in her flared brightly and then banked, waiting for another gust, another element, another something… She bit her lip and then realized it when his eyes became riveted to her mouth. She stopped and let her mouth go lax instead, and then watched with an almost detached fascination as he slowly leaned closer.
His lips landed on hers and her mind reacted to it like a fireworks factory on fire. It was chaotic and disorienting and absolutely, 100% dangerous. At first she did nothing as his lips gently pressed and then slotted between hers and pulled for a moment. Perhaps her non-reaction was enough to worry him because he retreated almost instantly, his eyes avoiding hers. Then she did react, digging her fingers into his jaw and dragging him back to her. Her lips slid on his, finding his lower lip and curling around it with a tickle of her tongue. He moaned in surprise and she just slipped in without thinking about it, tasting his tears and burger grease and wanting more… just more. She arched closer pushing him back into the sofa and changing their angle, and then his arms were around her, crawling up her back and trying to lift her, to pull her right on top of him.
Her fingers slid into his hair and he groaned wantonly then - a sound so unique and out of place for him that she could barely believe it. She pulled back slightly, dragging his lower lip with her, and then they broke apart with a loud gasp before she reconnected hungrily, licking and grasping and moving in hot, breathy demands. He shifted again, his mouth now biting and gasping on its own, as his arms constricted until she found it hard to catch her breath. She raised herself up and then fumbled as she swung a leg over him and tried to settle in his lap. Suddenly, he ripped himself away and his hands flashed to her hips to prevent her from sinking into him.
“Ngh…” was all he managed to say, and then she shushed him, brushing her lips across his cheek as her hand drifted down to tug at his belt.
“Emily,” he warned roughly and grabbed her roving hand by the wrist. She shushed him again, even as her brain screamed at her to ‘BACK OFF’. She no longer felt entirely in control and to her surprise that didn’t seem to bother her. She was just feeling, acting like she had when she was younger and fearless. The headiness of that almost forgotten sensation pushed her on and became the element that fueled her coiled something into an unstoppable act.
Her hand strained in his grip and drifted over the tented material along his fly. He groaned again - the same, wanton plea - and she trembled as her fingers inched back up to the belt and loosened it without him blocking her. Then, with his hand still wrapped around her, she popped the button of his pants and wiggled the zipper low. Her hand slipped inside as she breathed hard into his cheek, just feeling and not seeing. Her fingertips outlined him through his briefs, almost too lightly, but then he shifted his hips and she skipped across a hard bump and a patch of wet cotton.
“Emily,” he whimpered again and it sounded like a question, like ‘are you sure?’ To her, the question had already been asked and answered, but she didn’t know by whom.
“Shush Spence, s’okay… it’s really okay…”
His mouth was on hers in an instant, eating her words frantically as his hands grabbed her by the waist and ground her down into his lap. His hardness pressed into the fabric of her pants and she gasped into his mouth as her body reacted with a flush of wetness. She rutted against that pressure in frustration - too much fabric, too much in the way - and he stopped kissing her and leaned his head back into the sofa and made a shocked ‘ah’ as his hips sought hers. She loved his sounds - they were all new but she already loved how entirely unexpected they were. She watched him stretch under her, the muscles in his neck cording a little as he tried to push up into her, and she swept forward to lick that long, strained trail. A mournful ‘huh’ popped out of him and she backed off because it sounded painful, and when she saw his expression there was some hurt there. She almost stopped.
“Spence, I… I…” she stuttered, and then his hands moved to her blouse, pulling it loose too urgently and then snaking underneath to crawl across her skin. “Oh God,” she gusted when his fingers brushed the underside of her bra, and her whole body shivered cold and then hot when he cupped her with his palms. “Fuck… help me out of this… fuck!”
His hands slipped out and then flashed down the line of buttons so quickly they were almost a blur. Then he pushed the silk back over her shoulders as she shimmied out of it. His eyes were on hers the whole time - fascinated, haunted - and it made her stomach flip in arousal and unease, which was something she’d never dealt with before. She called his name again, worried, and he responded by pulling her back to his mouth and making her float with him in the moment instead. His fingers landed along her face, holding her reverently, and she was overwhelmed by a feeling of wrongness; it was too needy, too deep, too fast. The intensity of it was driving her mindlessly forward past all of her better instincts and her pervasive love of his friendship towards some sort of sudden inevitability that neither one of them could see or control. She whined because the thought hurt - she didn’t want to hurt him, didn’t think she was capable of it - but she also couldn’t stop herself. The intensity had flared up into an addiction she didn’t know she had until she was already messed up by it, and that didn’t seem fair. There should’ve been some warning…
He continued kissing her, moving along her jaw and sucking hard into her throat as she could do nothing but shiver and cry out against him. His hands moved to her back and in an instant her bra was gone, like a magic trick he’d been practicing. Then his hands were on her for real, stroking, lining, squeezing until her nerves were so frazzled that she thought her upper body might spark in the darkness. She took a huge breath and told herself to get some of her control back. Her hands moved to his shirt and ran down the buttons. He got the idea and leaned away from the couch to help her shuck it off him. Then he looked up into her eyes, flushed and tousled and unrestrained, and waited for her command.
Jesus fucking Christ, Spencer!, she thought as she shook again and got even wetter.
“Take off your pants,” she growled, and then shifted off him so he could move. She did the same as they watched each other fumble impatiently. She managed to get everything off but he stopped with one pant leg tangled around his ankle and his socks still on. He sagged back into the couch and held his arms out.
“C’mere…”
She slid back into him in a flash and they both gasped sharply when they rubbed against each other, both too wet and unfamiliar with each other to be ready for it. She dug her fingers into his thin shoulders and outlined him with her wetness, just a feather-light suggestion of connection. The muscles in his jaw flexed and his eyes slipped shut.
“Shit,” he gritted out.
“Okay?” she panted against his lips and she did it again, her skin feeling as if it were burning off where they came together. “Or no?”
“Fuuuuuck…. Emily…. EmilyEmilyEmily…” It came out desperate and adoring, and hearing it made her heart stutter brutally against her ribs.
“Spence-” She was overwhelmed by that dreadful feeling of wrongness again. She wanted to comfort him, be comforted by him, but something niggled in the back of her brain that she was failing at that.
“You don’t know, Em…” he gasped, and then one of his hands skimmed down her midriff and into her curls, slinking through her wetness curiously. “You don’t know…”
“Don’t know what?” she moaned as the twin sensations of dread and lust combined and rendered her useless again.
“What you do to me,” he whispered, watching her arch into his fingers, and smiling sadly. “What it was like seeing you today… walking into my nightmare…”
“Oh…” she gulped and felt a tear slip out of her again. She leaned into his forehead and tried to choke back the fear that was slowly losing ground to what they were doing. She couldn’t stop now if she wanted to, but she was terrified about what was happening. His fingers kept circling her, wrecking her completely. “I didn’t come here to hurt you… or j-judge you. I wanted to help… oh fuck, Spence, I just want to h-help. Can’t even do that right…”
“I know what you wanted, Em. But I don’t think it’s in your power to give to me.” He licked into her throat, once, twice, and bit down so surely and softly that it felt like a message she couldn’t read but she held close anyway because of its beauty. Then he added his thumb to his roving fingers and began to use her roughly. She keened against him and hated herself a little for it. “This is what I want,” he growled into her skin. “May I have this instead?”
She nodded and then grappled for his face, pulling him in for a rough kiss as she ground into him mindlessly. She cried a little as they moved, mouths eating the words ‘I’m sorry’ and ‘it’s all right’ and ‘I wish…’. They were all mixed together and she couldn’t tell who said what. When her hands cupped his face, his cheeks were wet.
Her whole body was an exaggerated arrow pointing to her cunt, and it embarrassed her. This wasn’t who she was to him - she didn’t know if this was ever who she was. His mouth moved to her breasts and sucked until she got dizzy, realizing that she’d been holding her breath. She coughed roughly and felt his lips mumble ‘Breathe’ into her sensitive skin, but she was one or two hip thrusts away from coming apart.
“Can’t,” she gasped. “Fuck, Spence… close…”
“Not yet.” He pulled his hand away and a cry ripped out of her that sounded bloody as it hung in the air between them. Then his hands were on her hips dragging her down and his lips were over hers. “Breathe, just breathe… my god, you’re so beautiful Icanbarelystandit…”
He rubbed her over him; she could feel every ridge, every unique curve across her oversensitive core. They were both so wet that they were positively slick, making their movements less precise and a lot more frustrating. Her fingers still dug down into his shoulders but her body went lax against him, too overstimulated to know what to do now. On one of their passes, he slipped in accidentally, just the tip, and they both froze instantly, holding their breath. His hands bit into her hips and then he shuddered violently, but he didn’t push forward.
“Spence…” she warned.
And then after a painful moment of nothing, she felt him slowly, achingly, push into her. It stretched out and took forever, him pressing against her fractions of an inch at a time as he gritted his teeth into her throat. The slow anticipation of him turned her mindless, making her almost swell and clutch as if she could drag him in and take over the pace. And then there was the realization that there was so much of him - he just kept pressing, filling her until it felt impossible. When he finally stopped and held still, gasping helplessly into her neck, she seemed almost painfully full, seated as deeply as she could go, and already she could feel herself rippling with the unavoidable. Just this glacial pull had been enough to set the tumblers rolling…
“You feel amazing…” he wheezed, holding her too close and not close enough. “Oh god… are you? Jesus, are you-”
“Move! Please!” she cried the moment before it hit and she lost all control. It ripped through her, over and over, and it was sharp and painful and completely exquisite. It took quite a while for it to dim - a slow descent rather than the usual gut-flipping dive - and she realized that he was slowly pumping in her, stretching out the tingling aftershocks into a luxuriant, undulating ride as his arms slid around her soothingly, pulling her close and cradling her.
“You were… that was… oh, Emily,” he mouthed into her as she clung to him.
She pulled him close, hiding her tears in his hair, and riding him as well as she could now that they were obscenely slick and she had lost most of her motor control. She murmured something gorgeous and secret to him, not really certain that he could hear it over his strangled breathing. But she had to - it was beyond her control. And then she wrapped him up tightly and rolled into his hips, urging him on.
“C’mon, Spence, c’mon… my turn to feel you lose yourself.”
He made a low grunt and then thrust into her savagely, making the bruised parts of her close around him to slow him down.
“That’s it… harder. You’ve shattered me… now take what you want of what’s left.”
He pumped into her faster, almost cruelly, making her whole lower body rock from his momentum and eliciting tiny, hurt ‘ohs’ from her with each pass.
“I-I want all of it,” he bit into her.
“Have it… have it all.” She whispered it into his ear and then licked the lobe in for a suck. But that was interrupted by a gasp when he slammed into her out of rhythm and she felt his wave crest, starting in his spine and ending at the tip of him deep inside her. “Oh, fuck, Spence… I can feel you. Goddamned magnificent…”
He used her viciously for a few seconds as he worked himself, and then he went still and clamped around her in a wordless cry as he let go. His fingers would leave crescent bruises, and his teeth would score a mark on her that she wouldn’t let him apologize for later. His hips pumped futilely as he wrung himself out, and she whimpered, utterly pleased to feel them drip down all over each other, filthy pride in the knowledge that they got to each other so completely.
He sagged back into the couch, taking her with him, and breathing as if he were having a heart attack. She cuddled closer, still buried in his hair, and twisting around his slick, softening cock with a moan.
“Oh god… don’t do that,” he gasped.
“Why?”
“ ‘Cause I came so hard I can’t even think, but when you moan… it’s… well, my body is sending a lot of mixed signals…”
“I couldn’t go again if my life depended on it,” she grunted and lifted herself off him with a hiss. She slowly stretched out along the couch because she was feeling dizzy, and after a moment, he stretched out beside her, wrapping his arms around her waist and pulling her close. She closed her eyes and swallowed back the swell of feeling that threatened to spill out - because it was beautiful and she craved it, but the wrongness had never abated. “I’m too old for that,” she rasped out instead. He just nuzzled close and kissed her neck like she was priceless.
They drifted together for a while in silence. She may have dozed. And then his fingers trailed up and down her arm in lazy ellipses. When she turned to look at him he was watching his fingers, lost in thought.
“Hey,” she murmured and waited for his tired eyes to meet hers. The exhaustion was back. She knew it would be, but it still made her heart sink.
“Hi.” He kissed her shoulder and then his other hand cupped under her breast and snuggled her back into his chest. Their legs were tangled together along the sofa. He’d somehow lost his pants, but his socks were still defiantly in place: one Mickey Mouse, one argyle. She loved this, fleeting as she knew it would be, so she memorized every detail, every line on his face when he looked at her, so that she’d never forget what being tangled together felt like.
“So, what’s next?” she asked, really worried about his answer. He blinked at her, a crease forming between his eyebrows as he thought about it.
“I take her home to Vegas,” he sighed.
Part of her was disappointed that his answer had nothing to do with what had just happened. But the rational part of her - the boss in her - said that it was good. She’d just dodged a bullet.
“Are you sure?” She turned in his arms to face him, their hands curled between their chests like they were praying together.
“Not really, but I can’t keep us in this limbo of indecision. It’s not like the choice will ever get easier.”
She dipped forward and left a soft kiss on his forehead. He hummed his appreciation.
“Do you want me to come?” It was sort of fishing, and sort of not, but the two were definitely mixed up together. He shook his head and frowned.
“It’ll take a day to sort things out at the treatment center and Bennington. Then I’ll have to tell Mom…” His voice trailed off. “We’ll have to fly back and that will be an adventure. And then I’ll have to stay and oversee the medication adjustments. Make sure she settles back in as best she can… It’ll take a while.”
“You don’t have to do this alone.”
He took her hand and opened it, laying a kiss against her palm. “The Unit needs you, and there’s nothing that you can actually do to speed this along. It’s not a matter of needing an extra set of hands.”
She tried not to feel rejected. She didn’t know what they were now, but she didn’t have a right to that level of hurt. She knew that much.
“I’m not offering a second set of hands, Spence.”
He stared at her for a long time. “I know you aren’t.” After he said it, his expression looked the same as when Diana denied him as her son, and he’d hidden from it by staring out a window.
Well, I guess that’s that, isn’t it? She turned her head towards his shoulder to hide anything that might leak out from under her armor. She felt his lips in her hair.
“Will you stay tonight?” he whispered, and her heart fluttered uselessly. She nodded and sighed into him. At least they’d have this. At least they could hold one another and pretend that their lives hadn’t suddenly become very shitty and would make them miserable for the foreseeable future.
“Thank you for this,” he murmured as she began to fall asleep. Her arms tightened around him and she bit her lip to stop herself from speaking. Nothing she could say would do either of them any good now.
They slept.
At dawn she rose gingerly from the couch, stiff and sticky, and had an unpleasant image of attempting to clean herself up in a bathroom at the airport before catching her stupid-early flight back to D.C. She dressed as quietly as she could but when she turned back to the sofa, he was watching her, soft-eyed and sprawled crazily, and his expression was one he’d wear if he was never going to see her again. Her heart stopped for a second but she knew her mask remained safely in place.
“Did I wake you? I’m sorry…”
He stared at her some more and, Jesus, she wanted to kiss him, but then he held out his hand to her. “Come here.”
She perched on the edge of the couch, her hip bumping his. “Flight’s in two hours,” she said unnecessarily, not knowing what he was going to do. He waited for her hand to drop into his, and then he drew it to his mouth and kissed it. He curled it in his palm and let them both rest on his chest over his heart. She swallowed down her dry throat and waited, but he said absolutely nothing. Just the steady tha-thump, tha-thump of his chest against her skin.
“Will you call me? Keep me updated?” she asked rashly, wanting some sort of connection to remain. He was silent for a long time, squeezing her hand in his.
“I’ll let you know when I’m coming back to work,” he murmured.
“That’s not…” she huffed in exasperation.
“I know what you meant, and I know you’ll give me as long as I need. I promise I won’t take advantage of that.”
“Oh, for chrissakes, Spencer, I couldn’t care less if the Bureau complains about the length of your leave.”
“I know that too,” he cracked a tired smile and she couldn’t help but smile back. “I’m just saying, I don’t want to make the new boss look bad.”
And there it was: she was his boss, regardless of everything else. It was a truth, but she’d always hoped that ‘boss’ wouldn’t be the first thing that sprung to mind when he thought of her. Especially not now. But there wasn’t any purpose in arguing with reality, and she had to go before the lingering effects of the night before moved her to do something that was perilous for both of them.
“Okay, good to know,” she said dryly, and tried to shake it all off. She rose from the couch and her hand slipped from his easily. His eyes followed her but they were impossible to read. “Be safe,” she murmured as she collected her bag and phone.
“You too,” he whispered.
And then she left him behind and crept out into the thin daylight smelling of him and still feeling the imprints of his hands beneath her clothes.