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She wasn’t jealous.
It’s something she’s told herself, as well as JJ and Derek whenever they take the opportunity to tease her, again and again over the last few days. A mantra she’d started as soon as it became clear that the lead detective on the case they’d been called away on, the case that had pulled Emily out of Aaron’s arms and his warm bed, was flirting with her boyfriend.
Detective Sarah Moyes was a smart, funny and beautiful woman, and the worst part was that she was nice too, so Emily had no real reason to dislike her, other than the relentless flirting with Aaron. She smiled at him constantly, made a point of ensuring her fingers lingered over his as she passed him a file. It would be subtle to anyone who wasn’t trained in studying human behaviour, and for the first time in a long time, Emily found herself cursing her skills.
“If it helps,” Dave says as he sidles into the kitchen next to her, his smile annoyingly mischievous, “He hasn’t noticed.”
She sighs, also cursing the skills of her friends and their ability to see what her wonderful, stupid, handsome boyfriend hadn’t been able to see for himself. “I know he hasn’t,” she grumbles, “That somehow makes it worse.”
Aaron had told her, more than once, that he didn’t understand what she saw in him. It made her ache, made her crack in her chest that he didn’t see his own worth. That he didn’t see how kind, intelligent, funny and handsome he was, or how he was the best man she’d ever met. The way he loved her, the way he cared for her, had been hard to get used to at first. It was so different to how partners had treated her before, both men and women who had always seemed more interested in being seen with her than actually being with her, and she’d struggled to handle it. She’d yelled at him more than once, tried to bait him into arguments that he would not take part in, all too aware of what she was doing, frustratingly patient with her as he helped her work through her inability to let him love her.
She was used to it now, to the point where she was afraid to live without it. She felt protective over him and their love for each other, so it didn’t take a behavioural analyst to know why Detective Moyes was irritating her so much.
Emily’s attention is pulled towards them again when she hears Detective Moye’s laugh, and she sighs, clenching her teeth as she looks back down at her cup of tea.
It also didn’t help that she looked exactly like Haley and Kate Joyner and, therefore, through no fault of her own, fed into Emily’s biggest insecurity in her relationship with Aaron.
“You should talk to him about it.”
She scoffs as she looks up again. “And tell him what?”
“Well, maybe start by telling him you’re jealous.”
She looks at him sharply, her eyes narrowing as he has the audacity to laugh at her, “I am not jealous.”
“Right, of course not.” Dave clears his throat and pats her on the shoulder as he starts to walk away. “I believe you, bella. Thousands wouldn’t.”
She curses under her breath at him and looks up just in time to see Detective Moyes place her hand on Aaron’s arms, and Emily holds her cup of tea so tightly she’s surprised the handle doesn’t snap off.
“Crap,” she mutters to herself as she sips her drink, desperately trying to look anywhere other than the woman man-handling her boyfriend.
She was definitely jealous.
___
She gets to the end of the day without losing her cool and slinks off to her room the moment dinner is over. She has a long, hot, shower - desperately ignoring the crap water pressure and the lack of her tall handsome boyfriend in there with her - and changes into a t-shirt of Aaron’s that she’d taken from him weeks ago. She’s just about ready to slip into bed, to read the book she’d only just remembered to pack, when she hears a familiar knock on the door. She knows it’s him without needing to look, but she does anyway, smiling to herself when she sees him through the peephole, the distortion of it making him seem even taller.
“Hi,” She smiles at him as she pulls the door open and stands back to let him in, suddenly all too aware that she’s only wearing a large t-shirt and anyone could walk past her room. “I was starting to think you weren’t coming by tonight.”
Even though everyone knew about them these days, plausible deniability was still important, so they still had their own rooms on cases, but they never slept alone. She’d either sneak into his room, or he’d sneak into hers. Taking turns to seek the other out so they could sleep pressed against each other, wrapped up in the love they’d both long given up on feeling in this life.
“Never,” he mumbles, leaning in to kiss her, his lips stamped against hers before he tugs her into a hug, using their height difference due to her being barefoot to his advantage, his chin resting on top of her head as she hugs him bck just as fiercely, “I missed you today.”
She kisses his chest and pulls back, her lips pressed together to try to contain her smile as she pushes her fingers through his hair. “We spent most of the day together,” she says teasingly, scratching her short nails over the first signs of his facial hair as she cups his cheek, “Apart from when I went with Dave to do that interview.”
“I know,” he replies, his hand sprawled on her back to hold her close, as if there was anywhere else she’d rather be, “But I can’t do this when we’re working,” he says before he leans in to kiss her, taking his time with it as he cups the back of her head, drawing a contended sigh out of her before he pulls back.
She hums, licking her lower lip to chase the taste of him, “True,” she says, smiling up at him, “And if you kissed me like that, you’d have to kiss everyone like that just to be fair,” she quips, her smile getting wider when he laughs, “And you’re all mine.”
“All yours, sweetheart.” he stamps his lips against hers again, but there’s something about the way he says it that makes her smile falter for just a second, his unknowing reassurance bringing back everything she’d been trying to pretend she hadn’t been feeling all day, “What’s wrong?”
She blows out a slow breath and avoids his eye contact, knowing she’d crack if she saw anything close to the kindness from him that she’d become frustratingly used to. “Nothing.”
“Em,” he says, reaching for her hand and squeezing it, his smile just as soft as she knew it would be when she looks up at him, “You can tell me anything, you know that.”
She huffs this time, scrunching her nose up as she practices what she wants to say in her head, every word of it feeling more ridiculous each time she tries to rephrase it. “It’s…silly.”
He cups her face to stop her from looking away, and he runs his thumb over her cheekbone, his calluses tracing a small patch of freckles he’d become obsessed with the moment he saw them for the first time. You could only see them when you were this close to her and she was bare-faced. It felt like a part of her that was just his - usually hidden away by her makeup or distance.
“You’re never silly,” he says, and she has to stop herself from smiling at how earnest he sounds, as if she could tell him that she thought that chocolate milk came from brown cows and he’d simply nod along. She shakes her head, unsure if she’s shaking her head at him or herself, or both of them, and she sighs.
“Detective Moyes has been flirting with you for days,” she says, her cheeks burning with embarrassment as she finally says it outloud. “It’s driving me crazy.”
He frowns, and he’s about to deny it, playing back everything Detective Moyes had said to him all day and failing to see what Emily is talking about, but the look on her face lets him know that wouldn’t be a good idea. The last thing he wanted to do was to diminish how she felt, or to tell her she was imagining things.
“Sweetheart-”
She doesn’t give him a chance to say anything, carrying on as if he’d never started trying to speak, “And I know you don’t see it, but you’re a catch, and she’s your type, and-”
It’s his turn to cut over her as he frowns, “My type?” He says, tilting his head at her curiously, “What do you mean?”
She laughs, and it sounds far too close to hysterical for her liking as she stands back from him, crossing her arms over her chest as she shakes her head. “What do you think I mean? She looks exactly like Haley,” she feels guilty as soon as she says it, and she looks down at the floor, just about muttering the rest. “And Kate Joyner. I…” she clears her throat and shrugs sadly, kicking her feet against the threadbare carpet, “I look nothing like any of them.”
She’d always known she was beautiful. It was something she was told by friends of her mother’s the moment she hit puberty, men old enough to be her father asking her to dance and smiling at her in a way she didn’t quite understand at the time, but made her shudder when she looked back on it. Her insecurity wasn’t in the fact that she didn’t think Aaron didn’t find her attractive, she knew that he did, he told her that he did, but there was part of her that worried it would be short-lived. That another short, blonde, pretty thing would come along and remind him of what he truly wanted.
She swallows thickly, suddenly feeling exposed standing in front of him in nothing more than a t-shirt that once belonged to him, even though he’d seen her naked countless times. Even though he’d been the first, and she hoped the only, person to see the scars Ian had left behind, reminders of all that she’d survived scattered across her skin. This was a different kind of vulnerability, one she still wasn’t used to, and it has her tugging at the hem of the t-shirt in an attempt to cover more of herself.
Then he’s there right in front of her, his feet coming into view before he hooks his finger under her chin and makes her look up at him, “Sweetheart, you’re my type.”
She laughs, and it catches on something wet in her chest as she closes her eyes, “Honey-”
“I mean it,” he says, cupping her cheek to hold her in place as she tries to look away. “You are my type, Emily Prentiss, and you have been for a long time. If she was flirting with me-”
“She was.”
He smiles as she grumbles, and he strokes his thumb back and forth over that patch of freckles on her cheek again. “I didn’t notice. Because the only person I ever see is you. It’s borderline distracting at times.”
“I probably shouldn’t be admitting this to my boss,” she laughs, for real this time, and she shakes her head, “You distract me too,” she says, wrapping herself up around him again, sighing contentedly. “I’m sorry.”
He kisses her forehead, “You have nothing to apologise for. If I apologised every time I got jealous when someone flirted with you, I’d never do anything else.”
She furrows her brow, something he feels against his lips more than he sees, and she pulls back just enough to look at him. “What?”
He raises an eyebrow at her. “Come on, sweetheart. People flirt with you all the time. You’re gorgeous, and you’d have chemistry with the coffee maker if it could talk.”
She laughs before she presses her hand against her mouth to capture it, the joy almost too sharp. “Well,” she says, clearing her throat as she calms down, pushing his hair away from his forehead, smiling as it flops back down, “It’s a good thing the only person I ever see is you.”