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It had been a close call. Too close.
From the very start of the case, from the moment Penelope presented the team with photos of victims who looked a little too much like Emily, Aaron had a bad feeling about it. Fear had immediately crawled under his skin, taking residence in his bloodstream, making his stomach churn whenever he looked at the woman who had somewhere along the way become his best friend. She took it in her stride as she always did, her only acknowledgement of the resemblance she had with four dead women a brief widening of her eyes and a clearing of her throat before she moved on. A fake smile on her face as she asked questions whilst Penelope presented the case.
He hadn’t been able to shake it off so quickly, his eyes fixed on the pictures in front of him until Emily had laid a hand on his shoulder. Her touch had brought him back to himself, forcing him to turn to look at her where she was sitting next to him. She’d offered him a half smile, a tiny moment between the two of them that had passed the others by. A quiet reassurance that she was fine, that she was right there with him, that nothing was going to happen to her. All he’d been able to do is nod sharply before he pushed forward, forcing his fear back down into his stomach, letting it settle there so he could do his job. He’d always admired her ability to compartmentalise, something that made much more sense once he learnt of her past with Interpol, but there were times like this when it scared him.
She’d always been stronger than him, he just hoped one day it wouldn’t get her killed again. He didn’t have to imagine what it would be like to bury her, how it felt to try and live without her.
It was only after he’d signed off on her fake death, only after he made that decision for her that he realised he was in love with her. Months and years worth of moments that had passed him by as they happened playing on a loop in his head, a grim film reel his subconscious wouldn’t give him reprieve from. A reminder of what he could have had if he’d been braver, if he’d realised something was wrong and saved her before he had to bury her to keep her alive. He told himself if he ever got her back he’d tell her, he’d admit what he wishes he’d been brave enough to admit to himself back when everything was a little bit simpler. When they weren’t both recovering from being torn open by their monsters, broken and left in pieces on the ground, forced to pull themselves back together in solitude.
When she did come back she was different. A shell of the person she once was. It was a feeling he was familiar with. The desire to fit back into a life that no longer felt like yours and the exhaustion that came with it. The need to be recognised as who you were now, that going back was impossible. Instead of burdening her with anything else he was simply her friend. The person she came to on her bad days. Coffee before work that turns into wine and dinner afterwards. Nights spent at his apartment with Jack that brought out her real smile, the one that made Aaron’s world stop. It was time he cherished, a part of his life he couldn’t imagine being without, so he’d decided to not tell her how he felt, to lock it away. He’d rather have her in his life like this than not at all.
Even if that meant one day he’d probably have to watch her love someone else. He wonders if that was his penance for not being able to save her from Ian. A cruel punishment that he’d been handed down by a God he wasn’t sure he believed in.
Overall, the case goes as so many of them do. They work the profile, help the locals speak to victims families and they do their jobs well. It’s typical, until the unsub corners Emily during the takedown.
It’s fast and he knows she’s never in any actual danger, but those few seconds when she had a gun pointed at her head, angry vitriol being spat at her by a man who hated her purely because she looked like his ex, were haunting Aaron. Following him like a phantom around his apartment, tapping him on the shoulder and whispering all the ways he’d failed into his ear until he forces himself to go to bed.
He knows Emily is worried about him, a thought that feels absurd given she’d been the one who could have been hurt, but he’d shrugged her off before they left the jet. A smile he knew she didn’t buy plastered on his face as he insisted he was fine before he sent everyone home for the day.
He’d be okay. He always was. He’d get past this like he had everything else because he didn’t have a choice.
He believes it. Right up until the moment he wakes up, her name an echoing scream around his bedroom.
___
Emily grumbles as she wakes up, briefly burying her face in her pillow as she’s torn from sleep. She looks at the clock on her nightstand and growls, furrowing her brow when she sees it’s 3 am, wondering why on earth her alarm was set so damn early. It takes a second for her to realise the sound is her phone ringing and she sighs as she sits up.
“If this is Pen with a case I swear I’m kidnapping all those trolls in her office,” she says gruffly to herself, turning her phone over and blinking harshly against the bright light.
Her breath catches in her chest when she sees Aaron’s name on the screen accompanied by a picture she’d taken of him and Jack last time they went to the park. Any remaining desire to go back to sleep disappears, replaced by concern for her friend.
For the man she loves.
When they first met she didn’t like him and she didn’t hide it. His own disdain for her enough to fuel the fire of it. She’d slowly started to like him, finding him funny in a way she hadn’t anticipated when he chastised her for asking after a politician in her first few weeks on the team. She likes to think that they’d worn each other down, that their sharp edges had lined up perfectly, slotting together like pieces of a puzzle she’d never expected to piece together. She realised she was in love with him after Foyet had attacked him, but the timing had never been right.
A part of her had wished she’d jumped him the very first time she’d felt attracted to him, sure that they would have been entirely incapable of simply having a physical relationship and that it would have lead to them being together. She wished she could have been there for him throughout the ordeal with Foyet, that she could have held him the way she’d itched to when Haley died - wanting nothing more than to provide the comfort she knew he’d never ask for.
Despite that, she knew it was good they weren’t together, that whatever fantasy she had of a normal life with him had died with her. She was glad he hadn’t been drawn into the situation with Ian, something Aaron absolutely wouldn’t have let her face alone if they were together. She’d never have been able to forgive herself if something had happened to him or Jack, the sound of their names coming from Ian’s lips, the way he pronounced them, still liable to echo around her mind in the middle of the night.
She tried to convince herself that it was better this way, that friendship was enough, because she couldn’t lose Aaron. Not again.
She answers the phone quickly, “Aaron?” She asks, her voice rough from sleep. She doesn’t hear a response, just ragged breathing, something that only makes her panic more, “Aaron? Are you okay?” There’s another pause, another second that feels like it lasts a lifetime, and she sighs, already throwing off the sheets covering her lap and going in search of some pants to wear with the t-shirt she’d been sleeping in, “Aaron, I need you to-”
“I’m okay,” he says, sounding anything but as he cuts across her, and it does nothing to reassure her, “I’m okay.”
“You’ve called me at 3 a.m.,” she says, pressing the phone between her ear and her shoulder to hold it in place as she pulls on some sweatpants, “You sound…” she trails off, hesitant to embarrass him, “You sound like you’ve been crying.”
“Sorry-”
“No, Aaron, honey that’s not-”
“Go back to sleep, Em. I’m fine. I’m sorry for calling I shouldn’t….I’m sorry.”
He hangs up, the line going dead and she sighs as she closes her eyes, her palm against her forehead as she tries not to go through all the worst-case scenarios she’s suddenly overwhelmed by. She tries to call him back but it doesn’t go through, the line ringing out until his voicemail, and she shakes her head as she exits her bedroom, grabbing her gun from the safe as she goes. She pulls on some shoes and grabs her car keys, ignoring the shake of her hands as she locks her apartment door behind her.
If she was ever asked about the drive to his apartment she wouldn’t be able to recall a second of it. She’s on autopilot the entire time, gripping the steering wheel so tightly her knuckles go white, skin drawn so tightly across bone it almost hurts.
The car is barely parked by the time she’s out of it, and she remembers to lock it - not even looking back as she presses the button on her keys, pointing them in the general direction of her car as she walks away from it.
She has a key to his place. He gave it to her a few weeks ago when she looked after Jack by herself one night after school. She’d kept it, left it right next to the key for her place on her keychain, and she’d never been more grateful that she had. She slides the key into the lock and blows out a breath before she turns it, knocking on the door as she opens it.
“Aaron? It’s Emily.”
For a moment, it’s three years ago. The fear that licks at her insides, sending a shiver down her back, familiar as she pops her head around his door, her hand hovering over her gun in the waistband of her sweatpants. Instead of finding a blood stain on the floor, the shape of it still visible to her if she stared at the carpet too long, she finds him sitting on the couch. He’s leaning forward, his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, and she’s not even sure he’s heard her. She remembers him saying Jack was away with Roy and Jessica, something she was currently grateful for, and she glances around quickly and is satisfied they are alone. She closes the door behind her and places her gun down before she walks over. She kneels in front of him and places her hand on his knee, squeezing tightly when he jumps, his eyes slightly wild as they meet hers.
“Hey, it’s okay,” she says, squeezing his knee again, “It’s just me.”
He closes his eyes and shakes his head, sure she’ll disappear, that this is just his mind being cruel to him again, but she’s still there when he looks back. Her eyes soft and full of concern as she looks at him.
“Emily? What…why are you here?”
She cups his cheek, only realising as she does it that she’s never done it before, and strokes along his jaw.
“You called me, remember?” She says, careful to make sure she keeps her voice quiet. He frowns for a moment and then he nods, the jumbled moments from the last hour or so unscrambling, finally becoming clear, “You hung up and I couldn’t call you back, I was worried.”
He nods again, clenching his jaw, something she feels beneath her palm, “I uh…I think I broke it. I threw it across the room.”
That makes her worry even more than she already had been. She could count on one hand the number of times she’d seen him lose control, when his carefully constructed hold on his emotions came undone, and it had only ever been in high moments of stress. She pushes the concern down, knowing she had to play this carefully, that she had to approach this like he was a caged animal.
She supposes in some ways he was, trapped in an enclosure he’d built himself. Chainlink fences welded together by parents who should have done more and a life that had dealt him more than his fair share of cruelty.
She flashes him a smile, “Well, that’s okay. We can get you a new one. I have it under good authority that your best friend is pretty loaded.”
He chokes on a sound she thinks is supposed to be a laugh before he swallows thickly, “Thank you for coming. You can go, Em. I’m fine.”
She scoffs and stands up before sitting next to him on the couch, close enough to force him to have to move to make room for her. She reaches for his hand, something else she’d never done before, and links their fingers together.
“Aaron, that clearly isn’t true,” she says as softly as she can, “You called me at 3 a.m., you barely made any sense…” she sighs, “Please tell me what’s wrong.”
His instinct is to tell her he’s fine, to insist that she leaves, but he knows no one had ever been able to convince Emily of something she didn’t want to do. She was just as stubborn as he was, a trait that he both loved in her and that frustrated him in equal measure, and he knew she wouldn’t leave. That she’d sit right here on his couch at 3.30 a.m. in a t-shirt, sweatpants and mismatched shoes. As he looks at her, nothing but understanding and something he thinks might be love reflecting in her dark eyes, he realises that he wants to tell her. That the part of him that wants to bask in her comfort, in her presence, is bigger than the part that wants her to leave so he can process this himself.
“I…” he shakes his head at himself and clears his throat, “I had a nightmare.”
It feels juvenile, and he hates it, but he sees no judgment flit over her face, only understanding, and for a selfish moment he’s grateful that this was something she understood.
“Oh,” she says, squeezing his hand again, smiling softly when he squeezes back, “Do you want to talk about it?”
He sighs and closes his eyes before he looks down at their joint hands, letting himself enjoy the feeling, how perfectly her hand fit in his.
“It was about today. We…I couldn’t save you,” he says, his voice tight as he relived it. Memories of what he’d seen in Boston when they couldn’t save her then mixing in with what had happened today. The feel of her blood against his skin just as warm as her hand was in his now, “I was too late.”
It feels like a punch to the gut, guilt filling her lungs so quickly it winds her, leaving her temporarily unable to breathe. He doesn’t need to say any more for her to know what’s happened, what he’d seen in the dream that had pushed him to call her when he was still half in it. She wonders if she’d ever be free from it, if the decisions she’d made back when she had no one would ever stop impacting the people she had now. The ripple effect forever ongoing, moving outwards in ways she could never have imagined when she first heard the name Ian Doyle.
“I’m sorry,” she says, her voice shaking as she chokes out the words. He frowns as he looks back up at her, confusion knitting his brows together.
“What are you sorry for?” He asks, and she sighs, the sound catching in her chest, and he holds her hand tighter, sandwiching it between both of his, his gaze as intense as she’d ever known it to be, “You have nothing to be sorry for, Em. None of this is your fault. I was just so worried about you earlier,” he shakes his head at himself and laughs bitterly, “I know in comparison to everything you’ve gone through it was nothing, but the moment I saw the victim profile, how similar they all looked to you I panicked,” he clenches his teeth, as if he was angry at himself for reacting at all, “I don’t think I can handle losing another woman I love to this job. And it’s not that I expect you to quit, I could never ask that of you, I just don’t know what to do.”
His words hang in the air around them for a moment before they both realise what he’d said at the same time. She feels her mouth go dry and his hands go slack around hers before he tries to withdraw them, his jaw tight again as he tries to put space between them that she won’t allow.
“What did you just say?” She asks, breathless in a way she wasn’t expecting, the accidental confession taking up all the space in her chest.
He clears his throat and stands up, shaking his head as he goes, “It’s nothing it’s-”
“No,” she says, cutting him off, determined not to let his moment pass them by as so many had before, “No it’s not nothing.” She stands a few paces behind him and crosses her arm over her chest, holding herself together in a way she idly hopes he’d do for her soon, “You…you love me?”
Aaron chuckles as he turns around, a sound that is more like a scoff as it escapes him, and he nods.
“Yes,” he says, “Yes I do love you,” he takes a step towards her, “But you already knew that, just like I know you love me too.”
She can’t deny it, just like she can’t stop her cheeks from turning bright pink as he says it, any thought that she’d been subtle long gone as she tightens her grip on her biceps.
“Yes,” she says, repeating his words back at him, “I do love you,” she takes a step closer to him, “Why didn’t you ever say anything?”
“Why didn’t you?” He asks, stepping closer to her again, invading her senses as she smells his cologne. He feels any remaining fear brought on by his nightmare fade away, replaced only with what he felt for her.
“The timing has always been off,” she replies, smiling sadly at him, “We haven’t exactly had the best luck these last few years.”
He laughs, the real thing that makes her skin tingle whenever she hears it, and he nods, “I think that’s an understatement,” he watches as she looks him up and down, clearly trying to anticipate his next move. “What do we do now?”
She uncrosses her arms and lets them fall to her side, taking the final step that closes the gap between them, close enough to him that she can see the light dusting of freckles across his nose, and the healed ear piercing she’d always wanted to ask about.
“Well, right now,” she says, “I say we go to bed, because it’s close to 4 a.m. and we need sleep before we talk about everything we need to talk about.”
“We go to bed?” He asks, and her smile turns into a smirk before she nods.
“Someone’s got to be here if you have another nightmare,” she says, reaching out and straightening the edge of his t-shirt unnecessarily before she rests her palm on his chest, immediately drawn in by the thundering his heart, “And I think it makes sense that it’s me,” she says, smiling up at him, “Since we’re in love with each other and everything.”
He wraps his arms around her without thinking about it, drawing her closer to him, their noses almost touching, “And then what?”
“Well,” she says, heaving in a breath, her chest stuttering with it, “Then we’ll talk, but I’m fairly sure we’re on the same page about a lot of things,” she licks her lips, wetting them before she carries on, “And we’ll go from there.”
Aaron smiles and clears his throat, “You forgot one thing.”
She frowns, not sure what he’s talking about, “What do you mean?”
He cups her cheek, holding her in place as he leans in to kiss her. It’s everything both of them had imagined it to be and more, the world reducing down to just the two of them, standing in his living room in their pyjamas after a phone call that had unintentionally changed everything.
When he pulls back for air she chases him, smiling as she licks her lip again, the taste of him against her skin something she knew she was already addicted to.
“Right,” she says, nodding before she presses her forehead into his, “How stupid of me.”
“Hey,” he replies as he pulls back, fake irritation painted all over his face, “Don’t call the woman I love stupid.”
She rolls her eyes at him and leans in to kiss him, a quick thing stamped against his lips that she knows will become a staple of her life. Something she would do to say hello and goodbye, a greeting she would one day not be able to remember living without.
“Come on,” she says, wrapping her hand around his, “I need some sleep.”
He guides her to his bedroom, holding her close, half worried that this was somehow all a dream he’d wake up from. He smiles as she sits on the edge of the bed and takes off her shoes, seemingly only realising they weren’t a pair as they drop to his bedroom floor. They climb into bed together, curling around each other like they’d done it a thousand times before instead of it being the first.
As they fall asleep dawn breaks outside, the first sign of a new day, of a new beginning, filtering in through the curtains of his room.