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“Let me help you.”
Emily cranes her neck to look at her husband as he crowds her against the shoe wrack in their closet, reaching over her head to grab the shoe boxes stored on the very top. She narrows her eyes playfully at him and unsuccessfully fights a smile.
“I could have reached them,” she grumbles, turning to face him, taking the pile of flattened boxes from his hands.
“Of course, you could,” he replies, his smirk spreading across his face as he reaches up again to get the remaining boxes before the two of them walk out into the bedroom, their appearance making JJ and Penelope look up at them from where they were helping with packing up all their things, “I just thought I’d save us some time.”
“I’m not that much shorter than you,” she grumbles, unceremoniously dropping the boxes onto the bed, smiling as he wraps his arms around her in front of their friends and kisses the side of her head, an unusually public show of affection that makes her skin fizz, affection for him thrumming under her skin already because of what they were doing.
“I know you aren’t, Em,” he says, kissing her temple again before pulling away, his hand still on her lower back, “But I’d quite like to move into the new house this weekend as planned, and that means getting started on your shoe collection.”
Moving house again had never been part of the plan.
She’d been very determined that once they’d bought somewhere that was it, it would be their forever home. A place they’d stay permanently and grow old in together, the place they’d both find what they’d always been searching for.
The place where they’d raise their children.
She loved the house they’d lived in the last few years, but it hadn’t been the first one she’d fallen in love with when they started looking for somewhere together. The first place they’d found was her dream home. A place she’d imagined long before she’d seen it. The kind of home she’d wished she’d had as a child. Vast and warm and welcoming with a swing set in the backyard. Pictures of the family who had lived there before hung all over the walls, pictures she could easily replace with ones of her, Jack and Aaron when she closed her eyes as they walked around. It was sold out from under them, their realtor sounding apologetic as she explained the sale had happened quickly, and after the disappointment had worn off they’d moved on. They’d found the house they then bought in the same neighbourhood and had fallen in love with it too.
Then, four months ago, just two months after she’d lost the pregnancy she’d so desperately wanted, the original house that she’d loved, the one she still lamented over occasionally when she allowed herself to wallow in the ‘what could have beens’, went back on the market.
It was the first time since her doctor's appointment that had gone so wrong that she’d felt genuine joy. A flash of something deep in her gut that made her cheeks warm, hope and excitement flooding her veins. She’d mentioned it off-handedly to Aaron, avoiding eye contact as she tried, and failed, to sound unaffected by it.
He’d suggested they look into buying it within seconds, his smile wide as she looked up at him and asked him to repeat himself. He’d told her since that he’d been so happy that she seemed happy, that he’d have moved them to the other side of the world if it helped, that a couple of blocks was nothing.
She’s sure she’s never loved him more, never appreciated how much he loves her more, than she had in that moment.
It had taken a while to get everything organised, but they were finally here. Moving into their dream home, the place she knew they would live in forever. The place she hoped they’d, someday, expand their family.
They’d only started trying for a baby again the previous month. Her doctor had given them the go-ahead months ago, but Emily hadn’t been able to face it. Her grief from the pregnancy she’d lost in the very bedroom she was standing in so overwhelming she needed some time to try and wade her way through it. Get used to the heaviness of it on her chest, how it stopped her from breathing sometimes, the weight of it all only increasing as they crept towards what would have been her due date.
It was easier to pour all of her focus into moving house than it was to acknowledge the fact she was only supposed to be weeks away from having a baby
“You guys are so cute.”
Emily smiles as she feels Aaron stiffen next to her, his body tensing as it always did when one of their friends commented on the small insights they had into their private lives. She shakes her head lovingly at her friend, who is in the process of packing up Emily’s clothes, and she raises her eyebrow.
“What do I keep saying, Pen?”
Penelope sighs in response and places the sweater in her hands in the box in front of her, “If I keep bringing attention to it he’ll stop doing it.”
“Exactly,” Emily replies, smiling as JJ laughs from the other side of the bedroom.
“I’m not sure I should be here for this conversation,” Aaron says, leaning in to press a kiss to Emily’s cheek, his frown only deepening when all three of the women laugh, and he goes to leave, but he’s stopped in his tracks as Penelope speaks again.
“I should keep my mouth shut or I’ll never have another BAU baby to spoil.”
It’s a joke, and Emily knows it is, but it makes her freeze. The only thing she’s aware of is Aaron’s palm pressing into her back, how he steps closer even though he’d been in the process of leaving the room entirely. No one knew about the pregnancy they’d lost, about the baby they’d hoped and tried for, so she knows that this, and the relatively frequent comments, is not her friend being cruel. Aaron had asked his wife more than once in the last six months if she wanted him to talk to Penelope about it, to ask her to stop making the comments about them having a baby that they knew were well intended, but she always said no. A sad smile on her face as she shook her head.
It was easier this way. Even if it hurts in the moment.
Any further conversation is cut off by a crash downstairs, followed by Dave and Derek yelling simultaneously at Spencer. Emily chokes on a laugh and shakes her head, and she tilts her head to look at her husband.
“Can you please go check those clowns aren’t breaking our furniture?”
He stands a little closer, his hand drifting from the small of her back to her hip, squeezing gently and his eyes meet hers, briefly ignoring the fact there were two other people in their room.
“You sure?” He says, and she knows he’s asking so much more than the two simple words he’d said. Love and care and grief shining in his eyes in a way only she could see. Hidden behind a code only she could crack, the keys to them all stuffed away in her heart.
She knew the upcoming due date, a day still circled on the calendar in their home office, was something that was affecting him too. His embrace a little tighter these days, his kisses lingering a little longer.
She nods and places her hand over his on her hip, briefly linking their fingers together and squeezing, “I’m sure,” she smiles as they near another loud noise, “Tell them if they break my couch they are replacing it.”
Aaron smiles and nods dropping a kiss to her lips before he leaves the room, already calling out for their friends before he heads down the stairs. Emily looks back up to see that only JJ is now in the bedroom with her, and she frowns.
“Pen has gone into the bathroom to start in there,” JJ explains, smiling as she continues to pack things away, “She didn’t see you kiss so you’re safe.”
Emily chuckles and shakes her head, “We’ve been together for four years, you’d think she’d be used to it by now.”
JJ joins in on her laughter, “Well, in her defence, you and Hotch are very private.”
Emily opens her mouth to respond but is cut off by a squeal from the bathroom, loud enough to make her and JJ both jump. Before they can ask what’s wrong, Penelope runs out into the bedroom, a familiar white stick in her hands as she screams in excitement.
“You’re pregnant!” She exclaims, holding out the positive test she’d found whilst packing up the bathroom her joy evident.
Everything slows down around Emily, her breath caught in her chest as she looks at the small piece of plastic that had become her anchor at times over the last few months. More than once she’d stood with it over the trashcan like she had the day she’d had to end her pregnancy, pain starting to creep through her body, and been unable to drop it in. Her eyes fixed on two lines that were slowly fading, the only evidence she had that she’d ever been pregnant something she could hold. The false promises it had made, ones that had filled her with such joy until she’d seen her doctor, were still painful even now.
“Pen,” she starts, her voice shaking slightly, “I’m not-”
“How could you not tell us?” Penelope says, her excitement taking over everything else, making her miss the signs JJ clearly picks up on, the items she’d been packing abandoned as she walks towards them.
“Pen-”
“I’m so happy for you guys,” she says, pulling Emily into a hug that she doesn’t return. It’s the warmth of her friend's touch, the scratch of her cardigan against Emily’s arm, that brings he back to herself. She steps back, removing herself from Peneloe’s embrace, and she crosses her arms over her chest.
“I’m not pregnant,” Emily says, looking down at the floor, her stomach churning. When she looks back up at her friends she sees a mix of confusion and concern in their eyes and she sighs, “I was pregnant, a few months ago,” she explains, swallowing thickly, “Now I’m not.”
“Oh, Peaches I’m so sorry,” Penelope replies, stepping forwards, pausing in place when Emily steps back, well aware that a hug would be her undoing. “Why didn’t you say anything? We’re your friends. We would have been there for you.”
Emily clears her throat and presses her lips together as she forces herself not to say that it is none of their business. That she didn’t want anyone else to know. It was something just between her and Aaron, a secret of theirs that they protected and kept safe. Something that had brought them closer, yet another thing they had endured.
“You always say I’m private,” she says, forcing a smile that shakes, “This…wasn’t something I wanted to share.” She answers diplomatically.
“When did it happen?” JJ asks softly, a look in her eyes Emily doesn’t have the energy to place, and she swallows thickly.
Part of her wants to tell them she doesn’t want to answer the question, that she just wants to get back to the task at hand, but she sighs and decides she’ll tell them. Something about JJ’s demeanour, how she’s tense herself, telling her to share. That this might be something she has in common with her friend. She decides to file that thought away for later, reminding herself to ask her friend about it when it was just the two of them.
“Do you remember when Aaron and I were both off with the flu?” She asks, waiting for them both to nod, her eyes drifting again to the test still clasped in Penelope’s hand, “It was then. I had an appointment that Monday and we found out that the pregnancy was ectopic,” she swallows down unexpected anger at how they both sigh sympathetically, finding it irritating more than comforting, “We…I had to end the pregnancy and we took the week off to recover,” she clenches her jaw tightly, forcing back tears she wouldn’t shed now, the back of her throat burning with it. So stuffed full of grief that never seemed to get any easier she feels like she can’t breathe. “I would have been due next month.”
She isn’t sure why she shares that final detail, why it breaks through the defences she’d built months ago, but it does. They fall into silence, awkward and stifling around them, and Penelope tries to speak first, “Em-”
“Can I have it back please?” Emily says, stepping towards her friend as she cuts her off, her hand already out. Penelope looks confused for a moment and Emily sighs, “The test. Please.”
Penelope nods and hands it over, “Of course, I’m sorry.”
Emily nods and holds the test tightly, pressing it against her chest, the relief she feels palpable, “Thank you,” she replies, smiling tightly at her friend, “I know it’s stupid it’s just a test-”
“It’s not stupid,” JJ assures her, squeezing her shoulder before letting go, well aware that her friend’s boundaries had already been pushed this afternoon, “You’ve got to do what feels right for you.”
Emily laughs wryly, the sound wet as it catches in her chest, and she nods. “We should carry on,” she says, turning around for a moment to wipe a stray tear from her cheek, “Aaron will be pissed if we haven’t made any progress next time he comes up here.”
It’s a flimsy excuse and they all know it, but JJ and Penelope simply nod, the latter heading back into the bathroom without further comment, the usual bounce to her step somewhat diminished. Emily looks at JJ who tilts her head at her.
“You okay?”
Emily shrugs, “Yes and no,” she replies, “I don’t know.”
JJ nods, her arms crossing over her chest, “Do you want me to leave you alone for a little while?”
She chokes on a laugh and nods, grateful that her friend understands her enough to ask, “Yes please.”
JJ smiles at her and squeezes her shoulder, her hand lingering for a moment, “If you ever want to talk about it to someone other than Aaron…” she says, drifting off before she clears her throat, “You can always talk to me.”
“Thank you,” Emily replies after a moment and they exchange a tight smile, “I appreciate that.”
JJ nods and walks towards the closet, walking into the space so Emily is alone in the bedroom again. She blows out a steady breath and looks down at the test in her hands.
She grasps it tightly, and she closes her eyes. For a moment she can send herself right back to the first time she looked at it. The timer from her phone still ringing in her ears, Aaron’s impatient pacing in the bedroom a backing track she still sometimes heard when she couldn’t sleep. The overwhelming joy forcing tears down her cheeks as she gasps loudly enough for Aaron to hear her through the door.
When she opens her eyes and looks back down, the once bright pink lines now lighter, tears spill onto her cheeks again. She sighs as she places the test in a box full of important things she, Aaron and Jack are gathering. Social security cards and Jack’s birth certificate. A picture of him and Haley, Aaron and Emily’s marriage license. Their favourite photo from their wedding. A box of things they’d ensure were in their car on the short move two blocks away, a habit she’d picked up when she was young and wanted to make sure the movers her mother would hire didn’t lose her most precious belongings.
She lets her fingers linger over it for a second before she hears Aaron call her name from downstairs, and she puts the lid back on top of the box, hiding the test away again. Keeping it safe until she next needed to look at it.
She turns and heads out of the room, “Coming, honey.”
___
6 Months Later
“Let me help you.”
“No.”
The seriousness of her husband’s reply, the speed at which he says it, makes her laugh. The sound loud and booming as it echoes around the room they are in, bouncing off the sage green painted walls. She feels movement in her belly as she laughs, the baby, her son, shifting as he always does when she is happy.
“Seriously?” She asks, readjusting her position in the armchair she was sitting in, trying to ease some of the discomfort in her back, “Just ‘no?’” She says, smiling when he turns to look at her, his eyebrow raised, “I can help. The painting is all done, now you’re just making the crib.”
Aaron shakes his head at his wife, his eyes lingering on her bump, on how she rubs her hand over it, and he stands up, abandoning the partially made crib on the nursery floor. He groans as his knees crack as they straighten and he walks over to join her, sitting on the arm of the chair she’s in as he wraps his arm around her shoulders.
“And you’re busy making the baby,” he says, kissing her brow as she rolls her eyes at him, “You’re literally growing a person, sweetheart,” he adds, smiling at her, resting his hand on her stomach next to hers, smiling when he feels their son kick, “Just let me do the rest.”
She smiles at him, shaking her head and she cups his cheek. Ever since they’d found out she was pregnant again he’d been protective. Channelling his anxiety, his worry that something would go wrong this time too, into looking after her. She’s sure in another life where her first pregnancy had been viable, she would have found it irritating. That she would have yelled at him months ago for treating her like she was made of glass, but she doesn’t.
Because there were moments, especially whenever they had appointments or check ups, when she felt like she was made of glass. As if everything she had could shatter in an instant, her happiness robbed from her again as it lay in pieces around her. There were times when she’d lay in bed at night, lost in the feeling of her son moving inside of her, her hand pressed into her belly as she revelled in it, allowing herself to look forward to the future for the first time in months. Everything she had to look forward to dancing in the shadows cast across the bedroom in the early morning light.
“Are you ok, Em?” Aaron asks, and she looks at him, only realising when she frowns at him that she’d drifted off. She sighs and looks at her stomach, at their now linked hands over their child, and she shrugs at him as she looks back at him.
“Yes,” she replies, smiling softly when he raises his eyebrow at her, “I don’t know. I think I’m just worried,” she feels familiar tears burning at the back of her eyes, her ability to control her emotions long gone, “It just all feels too good to be true.”
He runs his hand up and down her arm and kisses the top of her head, “What do you mean, sweetheart?”
She chokes on a sob and shakes her head at herself, “I have the man of my dreams,” she says, tears spilling down her cheeks, “The house of my dreams. A little boy I love so much it hurts sometimes and another on the way,” she looks up at him, leaning into his palm when he presses it to her cheek, “Sometimes I wonder if I deserve it all. If it will all get snatched away.”
He wraps his arms tightly around her, pulling her as close as he can with their slightly awkward angle, and he runs his hand up and down her back, “Em, you deserve everything you have and more,” he says, sighing as she holds him even tighter, her hands forming fists in the back of his shirt. He pulls back to look at her, smiling as he tucks some hair behind her ear, “I’d give you the world if I could.”
She smiles at him and rests her forehead against his shoulder, “I don’t need the world, just this. Our family.”
“And you have us, sweetheart,” he assures her, tilting her head with his finger under her chin, capturing her lips in a kiss, “You have us.”
She nods, stamping a kiss against his lips, letting herself settle into his comfort. His love. They sit in their embrace for a few minutes in silence, both of them enjoying the movement of their son, and the thought of the future they were on the precipice of both exciting and terrifying in equal measure.
“You know what else I need?” She asks, the playful lilt to her voice letting him know the tone of the conversation was about to change. He pulls back and smiles at her, a spark in his eyes that she couldn’t live without.
“Pizza?”
She beams at him and nods, “You know me so well.”
He chuckles and kisses her before he stands, “Well, you are my wife,” he says, “The woman of my dreams.”
She grumbles at him, narrowing her eyes at the smile on his face, well aware he wasn’t making fun of her, merely acknowledging it wasn’t something she’d usually admit to, even to him. “Don’t make me regret saying that.”
He smiles at her from the doorway, “The usual?”
She nods, “Yes please,” she answers, “I’ll meet you downstairs in a couple of minutes.” Once Aaron disappears from view she feels a particularly hard kick and she chuckles, “Daddy loves us very much, sweet boy,” she says, her smile soft, “And we love him,” she feels another kick, “I can’t wait to meet you.”
When she holds her son for the first time just shy of three months later, the baby wriggling and screaming until he’s laid on her chest, she can’t help but believe, for the first time in a long time, that everything really was going to be okay.
She feels her heart get bigger, making more room for him next to his brother and Aaron, and the baby they never got to meet.