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It's in rural Maine when he notices it for the first time.
She's standing under the awning of the police station they've been stationed at, surrounded in the glow of blue smoke, a cigarette dangling lazily from her fingertips as she leafs through a battered copy of The Bell Jar. She's read it a thousand times before, she told him so herself, back when she first started at the BAU, and back when he worked for her mother and any conversations they had were hushed and chased with stolen vodka.
But it's not the book, and it's not the cigarette, and it's not the way her chest rises and falls with a tranquility he doesn't often see on her face in waking hours, none of that. He'd noticed that a long time ago, when he was twenty and she was seventeen, and everything was less complicated.
It's her hands.
More specifically; her nails.
Emily Prentiss hasn't bitten her nails since she left for college, when she finally escaped the harsh gaze of her mother and became her own person. He'd given her a bottle of acrid polish that tasted like forgiveness when she went to bite them. That was the last time they'd spoken, squashed in the back of the cab in New York, until she'd walked into his office ten years later, and suddenly they were thirty and twenty-seven, and falling apart all over again.
Her nails are frayed and bleeding. The skin around them begs for anti-septic, for salvation, for Emily to speak up about what was going on in her head.
But he knows Emily. And he knows she will never ask for something she doesn't believe in.
"You going to stand there all night?" There is no bite to her words, they're too tired for that. Her words haven't snapped at his wounds in a long time now.
He stubs her cigarette, looks at her hands in accusation, she turns her head. They've been playing this game for a long time.
She always wins.
"Let's go find that kid." He says instead of asking her the seven million questions that float through his mind like static, because he knows he will never get a straight answer. Emily is a better liar than him, and he always believes her. Maybe he should stop doing that.
His stomach clenches angrily. He shouldn't have let this happen again, should have known the signs, the triggers. Aaron has been playing this game for far too long to not let himself win, but the competitor seems to be bigger than him this time.
He stands looking at the mess in the toilet, staring at the destruction he can create with just his fingers and wonders when he became this. When he became this hollow shell, a wandering corpse, when he stopped letting her- them, in.
Aaron has to keep reminding himself that he can't let her in. She sees too much, understands too much, offers too much. She is a walking hurricane and he isn't ready to hide in the storm shelter to let the rain pass.
He hears movement in the bathroom and flushes the toilet quickly, shame creeping up his neck. He's the goddamned Section Chief, he cannot be seen as weak. Aaron has to be better than this, be bigger than this, has to beat this fucking thing before he becomes this thing again.
And the thing he will become is as glorious as it is disastrous.
The monster he will become will float in ecstasy and fall further than Icarus. The sun will burn him too quickly, he was never made to fly, his wings have always been made of feathers and wax, and at some point, it just isn't enough.
He isn't enough.
Although perhaps, he is just too much.
"Alright, Boss?" Morgan asks him. Aaron wonders sometimes if they are blind to his falling apart, or if he just hides it too well.
He offers Morgan a tight nod, the way he always does, and breathes a little easier when Morgan just smiles. He doesn't linger too long, doesn't stick around to see if Morgan notices the way his hands shakes, or the way the toilet smells, or if they can see the bruising on his knuckles.
But Emily sees.
He knows it in the way she frowns when he sits across from her on the plane, her eyes falling to his hands, and she knows everything. She always has. He hates her for that.
He loves her for that.
She arches an eyebrow, but doesn't say anything, because that would make her a hypocrite.
And so they just sit and pretend not to notice anything. Just as they always have.
He catches her when she falls outside of the compound, her face bloody, her breathing ragged. It was never supposed to be like this, no one was supposed to get hurt. He failed, he failed them, he failed her. Like he always does, because he can't seem to pull himself together and do his goddamn job. Aaron is supposed to know when his team is in danger, but now Reid is staring into the sky, and Emily winces his hands brush her ribs.
"Hotch, it's okay." Why does she always do that? Why does she always pretend like everything okay, like they aren't collapsing faster than a building exploding, like they aren't imploding like dying stars? "I'm okay."
"You're bleeding." He tells her, his hands coming away from her shirt bloody. Why is he always covered in her blood? Doesn't she knows it'll stain him?
Emily smiles. "It was worth it. Rather me than Reid."
"You weren't supposed to get hurt. Neither of you were." She just shakes her head.
"It's not your fault." She'd said to that to him a long time ago, when she'd woken up in a hospital and he was the only one there. She was seventeen, he was twenty, and they were falling apart. Funny how these things always repeat. "You didn't know."
"You didn't have to take it." His lungs constrict and his stomach feels heavier than lead, her blood is covering his hands and she's shivering, and he hates her and he loves her. She just shakes her head again, because they both know, in any given situation, Emily will always take the pain for someone else. He hates how it feels like he's holding the moon in his arms, he wished that she would burn to touch, but she doesn't.
She just feels like she fits.
Like she always has.
Like she never has.
"You've lost weight." She breathes it into existence, and he feels like he's on fire, he's holding the sun.
"You've been wearing long sleeves." They stare at each other like they're challenging a fight they're too tired too fight again. She will always win, he will always leave. He's good at leaving, she's bad at staying, they're a disaster waiting to happen.
The entire sky trembles in his arms, and she is holding onto the earth. These two things should never collide, but here they are. Stalemate. Checkmate. Pass GO and collect $200. They're going to destroy each other all over again.
They stand under another awning, he can't remember the name of the town, but it doesn't matter. They're all the same in the end.
The smoke dances around her like she controls it, the smell of tobacco curling under his nose, it's his favorite smell in the world. She inhales and exhales like she was born to do it, and the air around them is warm. It's summer, they're thirty-two and twenty-nine, and she's still wearing long sleeves and he's still avoiding invitations to dinner with the team.
"When do you think it all ends?" She asks, and he doesn't have to ask what she means. He's always understood exactly what she's saying, what she hides under carefully constructed sentences, what lurks beneath the surface of her tongue.
He looks into the sky. "Maybe it doesn't."
"It has to eventually." Because neither of them are stupid, and they know it will kill them eventually, these things they are doing to destroy themselves. The question she doesn't is what point do they begin to destroy each other. "We've been doing this for far too long, Aaron."
She doesn't call him that very often. He looks at her, at this woman he has been looking at since he met her, and wonders when he let her get this close. Close enough to see that sharpness of his bones, the decay of his teeth, the bruising under his eyes. He wonders when she let him get close enough to see the ragged edges of her fingers, the edges of bandages under her sleeves, the carefully concealed bruising on her forehead. Aaron wonders when they got this close to see every part of each other and stop caring that time was running out.
"I guess it stops when we decide it does." Her eyes are a colour he's only ever seen in paintings, Van Gogh's mulberry tree or Metsu's smoker. He'd never appreciated art until he met her and she forced him around every art gallery in New York, she collected postcards like trading cards and he can't remember the last time they were simple like that. When they just got coffee and talked about dead painters. Twelve years is a long time to wait for the earth and the sky to collide again.
Emily looks away, taps her cigarette against the railing. "I'm not sure I'm ready for that."
He smiles, and it feels like a Picasso, and he doesn't care. "Me either."
Her favourite painting is the Dolor Reumático. She told him when she bought the postcard in the Met, not long after she was out of hospital. She wore short sleeves, her scars glinting in the morning sunlight. People stared, he stared, and she didn't care. He wondered when that changed.
He wonders if her favourite painting has changed.
He wonders if she knows that it's his favourite now too, because it reminds him of her. Because he misses her. Because he hates her. Because he loves her. Because he wants her to destroy him so he can finally let go of her, but he knows she won't do that, because she is better than him. He will kill her and spit her out of his mouth like she blows out smoke.
He's good at that, destroying people.
Emily is crying when he wakes up. The room is shock white, assaulting his eyes, he almost doesn't notice her, but he could never keep his eyes away from her for too long. He's always looking for the moon.
"You're such an idiot." Her voice is hoarse and he hates himself. He's made her cry dozens of times, and it burns in his ribs every single time.
"I didn't mean it." There wasn't supposed to be a chase. He wasn't supposed to faint. She wasn't supposed to get stabbed.
They weren't supposed to hurt each other, but now they're sitting in a hospital and there's an ocean between them that he is too afraid to cross. The earth and the sky are never supposed to touch, and now they were throwing atom bombs at each other.
"I know you didn't." Emily sighs, dragging at her eyes. "You're supposed to be careful, Aaron. You're not supposed to die."
"I wasn't trying to." And they both know he is lying, he's bad at lying to her. "He hurt you, and I couldn't let him get away."
"Our jobs are dangerous, I'm going to get hurt." He knows this, of course he knows this, but when he saw the blood on her vest he couldn't help himself. Aaron's always going to do whatever he can to keep the moon in the sky, even if it means he'll rip up the earth. Emily draws soft patterns across his bruised knuckles, she could never be angry at him for long, this has been true since they met. "Aaron, you can't do this. They'll throw you in psych."
"I know." But the feeling of hollowness is addicting and he doesn't know how to get clean. He is as addicted to his empty stomach as she is to her razor blades. "I'm trying to get it under control."
"Maybe there is no controlling it anymore." She isn't just talking about the things he doesn't talk about, she's talking about the things they don't talk about. About the fact he'll always stand with her even though he doesn't smoke, about the kisses and the sex and the stolen hotel rooms, about the whiskey in their apartments and the paper she brings him in the morning even though she watches the news. They don't talk about it and it's killing them both. "Maybe it's just controlling us."
He's discharged by the afternoon and they don't talk about it. The world continues to end and they don't talk about it. They're cowards and the stars are all dying and the moon is next.
Emily stares at the blood on her arm as if she cannot believe it is her own. Aaron presses butterfly strips to her skin and considers running away. The bathroom fluorescents ring above their heads and they don't talk about it.
"Why are you doing this?" She asks.
He wipes the blood off of her wrist and wonders how she hasn't run out of room yet. "Because twelve years ago you took me to the Met and showed me your favorite paintings. Because you bring me my coffee in the mornings. Because you haven't run away even though I'm falling apart. Because I don't want you to die, Emily."
It's so simple that it's fragile. It's a delicate and wasting truth that runs through their veins like gasoline, setting them on fire. They're a bright, sparking bonfire and there's only so much fuel it can take before it becomes a supernova.
"I'm not going to die, Aaron."
"You might."
"So might you."
Stalemate. Checkmate. Pass GO and collect $200.
Aaron patches up her wounds and she makes him breakfast.
They eat oatmeal and he changes her bandages.
She watches the news and he reads the newspaper, but they share the same coffee.
They visit the Met, and he buys her all the postcards she lost when her apartment went on fire.
They go to Italy, and she buys him the leather wallet he lost when he joined the BAU.
And they exist together, and the world doesn't end even though the earth and the sky have collided. There's harmony in the chaos, in the endless cases and the blood and the hospitals, in the silent breakfasts when he won't eat, and the ringing of the lights when she falls again, and somehow it's okay.
They exist, and it's okay.