Work Text:
“Don’t,” Emily says quietly. The room is quiet, too quiet, and her bruises hurt. Above her lip, around her eye; but she doesn’t move away when Dave steps closer.
He's within her space now, not invading and she knows she's almost inviting him. The proximity is like Betadine, his warmth like a bandage, and Cyrus feels far away.
She doesn't know why she came to his house after they'd debriefed and gone their separate ways. She doesn't know what made her shrug off JJ's suggestion she stay at hers, Garcia hovering in a silent but obvious suggestion of the same, but it was obvious she needed something from someone - and here she was.
She wasn't a stranger to being close to Dave. They'd shared a bed - fucked, made love, whatever you wanted to call it - but the way he stood in front of her now wasn't about that. It was about protection, about pure, unadulterated security, and she looks to the ground between them.
"Don't," she manages again, but it comes out as an obvious "please", and his arms are around her before she can hardly realise it. Their height difference wasn't massive but enough for her to find the crook of his shoulder and to lay her head there - still pounding from the beating she'd endured from Cyrus. Her soul, too, bleeding and bruised and she begins to cry.
Truly cry, almost plaintively and his arms tighten around her more. Nothing is said, nothing more than the language of comfort he was giving her by holding her in the middle of his lounge room. It was enough he was just letting her *be*, letting her break in half after The Separatarian Sect and after she'd thought she'd lost Reid; it was enough that he cared to let it lay in silence.
"I thought -"
"Don't." His turn now, and her breath catches at the mirrored words. "You don't need to say anything, Emily. I've got you."
He always did, he always would she knows. When they'd made eye contact when he'd delivered the food to the cult, she felt their history and his physicality, and it was like a beacon of hope. She knew he was a part of a larger mission outside, Hotch, Morgan and the others standing ground to get her, Reid and the rest of the innocents out.
But it was her he'd looked to, a flicker of a glance to Reid then back to her. Her fear had probably been palpable, but she remembers it easing as he handed the chicken to Cyrus. She was falling apart, just like now, but he seemed to always be there when she was.
The present was just that, and she knows she's leaving tear stains on his shirt. Expensive shirt, but he just holds her and she sighs into his neck. Safety was an expensive aftershave and a painless embrace after having the shit beaten out of her - safety was Dave, and she hates herself for thinking that.
Emily finally leans back, missing him as soon as she does. Her face aches, her stomach spotted with bruises the EMTs had said where superficial but still hurt like a bitch. She misses him as soon as she does leave his arms, and he takes her hand as she wipes her face, vaguely embarrassed.
"Thank you," because that's all she can manage at that time, and she wonders if he's her North Star. If he has been all along, and if leaving his embrace will now mean she has to digest the aftermath of the cult alone.
No, she knows she's not alone - not by any stretch, and she grasps his hand back in a silent prayer. She survived, Reid survived. That was all that was important, now, and she is grateful for who she is, and that Dave sees that person as clearly as she thinks he does.
Slowly, she disconnects their hands, and with a wan smile that makes her face hurt, she turns and grabs her coat, leaving with his aftershave lingering and her breath heavier.
-