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“We’ll have fun when we get there.”
Emily is unsure if her husband is trying to convince her or himself with his soft and careful words. She thinks if she weren’t so anxious, if it wasn’t thrumming through her body like a second pulse, she’d find the fact he was convincing her to go out to a bar with their friends quite funny. Before she had Lucas, before the gentle pull of home had become so much stronger since he was born two months ago, it always used to be the other way around. Back at the start of their relationship, before she’d started working at Interpol and could walk just a few paces from her desk to Aaron’s, she’d sneak into his office and talk him into going for drinks with her and the rest of the team. She’d perch on his desk and nudge her leg against his and smile in the way she knew he struggled to say no to, and he’d sigh and nod as if they both didn’t know he’d already decided to come along.
Even after she left the FBI, when Clyde’s job offer took her to the other side of the city, not the other side of an ocean, she’d still be the one to talk Aaron into it. Someone from the team, usually Penelope, would text her and say they were planning on going out, and ask if she wanted to come and if she would ask Aaron if he would come too. Emily would call him, and he’d already know why she was when he picked up the phone. It was a routine of sorts that had followed them from being boyfriend and girlfriend, to fiance’s, to husband and wife.
Now, she finds herself standing in her son’s nursery, holding him against her chest as Aaron tries to talk her into going out for a few drinks with their friends. She sighs and kisses the top of Lucas’s head before she rests her cheek there, smiling when his heavy, sleepy breathing skips across her collarbone. She was dressed in a new pair of jeans and a wrap shirt, and had done her hair and makeup for the first time in weeks. She was physically ready to go out and leave her baby with Jessica for a few hours, but she wasn’t sure she was mentally ready. It was the first time she’d be spending any real amount of time away from him. She wasn’t due back at work for a few more months, one of the benefits of working for an international agency, but this felt like a good first step back to being her again. But the idea of putting her baby down and leaving him in the loving care of Jessica, who considered him just as much of a nephew as she did Jack, is enough to make Emily’s breath catch in the back of her throat.
She felt like she was stuck. She so desperately wanted a few hours where she was just Emily and not a mom to a newborn baby, but she also couldn’t step away, held in place by guilt and love that felt close to paralysing. It had all been a lot harder than she’d anticipating, and she’s as unsurprised as she is frustrated as tears start to burn in the back of her eyes.
Aaron notices, because of course he does, and he steps towards her, “Sweetheart-”
“Don’t,” she says, dodging his loving touch, his fingers skimming her shoulders as she steps past him. She sniffs and looks up at the ceiling as she blows out a slow breath. “If you hug me, I’ll cry, and I spent way too long on my makeup to do that.”
He smiles at her when she looks at him, his hands in the pockets of his pants as if he has to hold them there so he doesn’t touch her. “Em, if you don’t want to go, we don’t have to go. The team will understand. Jess will, too.”
She sighs because she knows he’s right. For someone who had once prided herself on being alone and enjoying it, she sure had a lot of people in her life now who were on her side no matter what. Even now, it was still unsettling at times, their unwavering support enough to bowl her over if she was feeling unsteady, but she didn’t know where she’d be without it. She looks down at Lucas, and he’s fast asleep, his cheek squished against her chest and his long lashes casting shadows over his face, and somehow, in that moment, she knows the best thing she can do for him is to start to rediscover who she was other than his and Jack’s mom.
“No,” she says, kissing the top of Lucas’s head and breathing him in, “We should go.”
Aaron nods, his shoulders relaxing a little, and they stand in silence for a few moments as he waits for her to settle Lucas in his crib. When she doesn’t, when she simply stands there with her lips pressed against the baby’s dark hair and her grip on him visibly tightens, Aaron clears his throat.
“Do you need me to take him from you?”
She sighs in relief, choking on a sound that is somewhere between a sob and a laugh because of how well her husband knows her, “Yes, please.”
___
As soon as their cab pulls up outside the bar, she’s excited to see her friends. Penelope pulls her into a hug the moment she sees her, and she makes a big enough deal out of Emily’s new jeans, jeans she’d hesitated over for hours, that she’s sure Aaron must have said something to her.
It feels normal. Like she’s able to slip back into the person she used to be quite easily, a skill she thought she’d lost the moment Ian’s stake entered her abdomen. But then JJ asks about Lucas, her smile kind and soft and knowing, and all the anxiety and guilt about having fun away from her baby comes rushing back.
By the time she’s on her second beer, Emily already feels lightheaded, a pleasant buzz she hadn’t felt in over a year loosening the tension in her shoulders as she leans against Aaron, her arm wrapped around his waist. It’s nice, and it’s fun, and she’s so glad she decided to do this.
“I got shots,” Penelope announces as she comes back from the bar and places a tray on the bar table near them. She looks expectantly at Emily and picks up one of the small glasses, the smell of tequila hitting her before the glass is forced into her hand. Emily chuckles and shakes her head, passing the shot over to Derek, who willingly takes it. Penelope pouts, her eyebrows furrowing together as she comes close to whining, “ Peaches.”
“I haven’t had anything to drink in a year,” she says, shaking her head as she smiles at her friend. “I’ve had two beers, and I already feel tipsy. And I have to parent an infant in the morning.”
“I remember when you used to be fun, Princess,” Derek quips, and she knows he’s joking, that he’s teasing her like he always had, but it makes her breath catch in her chest. She smiles tightly and forces a chuckle, hoping no one hears how fake it is.
Aaron does, and she feels him tense, his hold on her tightening as he sucks in a breath, and she knows if she didn’t say something, he would.
“I’m still a lot of fun,” she replies, cutting over Aaron before he can speak, grateful that she sounds more confident than she feels. She clears her throat and sips her beer before she places the bottle down on the table, and she turns to look at Aaron. “I need the bathroom.”
He runs his hand up and down her hip, chasing the curve of her waist that wasn’t quite what it once had been. She thinks she’d be more self-conscious of it if she was married to anyone other than him, but he made no secret of how he revered her and her body for what she’d recently been through, the changes brought on by carrying and growing their son. He squeezes her hip, a silent check-in, an are you okay that doesn’t need to be said. She smiles as she looks up at him and kisses him, does it again when Derek groans playfully from next to them, and she keeps her hand on his cheek as she pulls back.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” she says, smiling as he squeezes her hip again before he lets her go, his hand only slipping away from her entirely as she steps out of reach.
She blows out a breath the moment she’s in the bathroom, the shabby walls - written on in permanent marker by previous patrons - a strange sanctuary of sorts as she tries to pull herself back together. She steps into a stall and pulls the toilet lid down, her phone immediately in her hand as she sits down and checks to see if Jess has called or sent a text. She doesn’t know how she feels when she sees nothing, simultaneously glad things seem to be okay and sad that they were, that she wasn’t needed. She traces her finger back and forth over the picture of Lucas and Jack she has set as her wallpaper, and her chest shudders, tears pressing at the back of her eyes as she’s overwhelmed by emotions she still can’t name after all these weeks.
She unlocks her phone and scrolls through pictures of the boys, reliving the first eight weeks of her youngest son’s life in a few minutes. The hundreds of pictures she’d already taken were just a mere snapshot of all the love and joy they’d experienced since Lucas had been born. She loses track of time and only realises she has when someone knocks on the stall door, saying they needed to use the bathroom.
She’s only a little surprised when she sees Aaron waiting at the end of the hallway for her, his smile wide and his hands in his pockets as she approaches him.
“I was just about to send out a search party for you,” he says, his eyes shining in a way they only did when he’d had a few drinks, a softness in them that was usually reserved for their home, as if the love was just spilling out of him.
“Sorry, I got distracted.” She says, and she hums as she leans against the wall, her smile getting wider when he boxes her in, his arm wrapping around her waist, his hand on her lower back as he holds her close.
“Want me to talk to Derek?”
“No, it’s okay. He’s only trying to tease me,” she chokes on a self-deprecating laugh and she shakes her head, “It’s not his fault I’m a walking bag of hormones.” She hooks her arms around his neck, unsure if she’s more drunk on him or the two beers she’s had, “I just needed a minute.”
He nods, always happy to take her lead, and he smiles at her, his eyes flicking back and forth across her face until his smile gets wider, as if he’s just read her like she was an open book. To him, she knows she might as well be. He’d climbed over all the walls she’d built around herself, knocking out her defenses with patience and love that very few people had shown her. With anyone else, she thinks it would make her feel exposed, vulnerable, but with him, it makes her feel powerful. It makes her feel strong.
“You were looking at pictures of the boys, weren’t you?” he says, his smile frustratingly smug, and she narrows her eyes at him, her scoff dying in her throat as he carries on, “I do the same thing when I’m at work.”
Any irritation she’d felt, no matter how lacklustre, disappears in an instant. She sinks her teeth into her lower lip and trails her fingers through his hair, chasing the shiver she causes down his neck. “Really?”
“Really,” he confirms, stamping his lips against hers, “I have a favourites folder full of pictures of you, Luke and Jack, and I sit at my desk and scroll through them,” he smiles wryly at her, “I don’t get anywhere near as much work done as I used to.”
She laughs, and he does too, and she captures it against her lips, desperate to taste his joy and happiness from the source. “I love you.”
He nudges his nose against hers and smiles, the smell of scotch skipping across her face as he replies, “I love you too.”
She leans in to kiss him again, her lips just skimming his, but she’s stopped by someone clearing their throat nearby, the sound across the din from inside the bar and the moment she and Aaron had found themselves in.
They look up to find the team looking at them, all gathered around the opening of the hallway, different levels of amusement pained across their faces as Dave breaks the silence, his hand on Derek’s shoulder as he turns to him.
“You owe me a drink, I told you we’d find them making out in a corner,” Dave says, “It happens every time.”
Emily scoffs, her eyebrows raised in defiance as she refuses to feel the embarrassment she knows her friends want her to feel. She’s unashamed in her love for her husband as she kisses him quickly before she hooks her hand around his and leads him back towards the bar, narrowing her eyes playfully at Dave as she passes him.
“It doesn’t happen every time.”