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She shut the hotel room door behind her with more force than intended, wincing as the bang echoed through the room. Behind the closed door, she could hear Morgan's laughter down the corridor. The rest of the team would order fries, beers, scotch... someone would call dibs on the couch in someone else's room; someone would fall asleep with a TV remote in hand, watching a terrible film. They were skilled at this, the ritual of releasing the day's horrors in small, manageable pieces.
Emily wasn’t. Not tonight.
She dropped her bag down, set her holster on the hotel desk with more care than she felt and flicked on the lamp. The dim light printed a circle of light over the carpet. Beige. Always beige in a place like this, she thought to herself. Her mother liked to say beige was diplomatic. Neutral, tasteful and almost impossible to object to. Emily had never learned to object to it, like most things her mother approved of, not out loud anyway. Instead, she learned to live around it, how to tuck the bright stuff to the back of her mind where no one could see.
She opened the minibar, tiny bottles clinking together like teeth. She knew drinking right now wasn't sensible. It wasn't going to stop her.
Vodka first. She opened the bottle and drank it in one, embracing the burn as it slid down her throat. As it warmed her chest, the day unravelled again in her mind. Not the investigation itself or the sadness over decent men discovering the corners of themselves they had taught not to exist in their real lives. Not even Will's grief when he spoke about Charlie and the fact that he never knew something so important about his old friend. Of course, Emily would remember those things. She would remember it all, as she always did. But the thing weighing heavily on her chest was smaller, words spoken when she hadn't been there to hear them herself. Information delivered second-hand.
At the precinct, whilst they were reviewing case files, Hotch had told her, "JJ had a good read. She said, 'What if the unsub sees a freedom in the victims he wishes he had himself?' I think she's onto something.” He didn't editorialise; he never did. Emily listened quietly as he continued speaking.
A freedom he wishes he had himself.
Wishes.
Himself.
Herself?
Something inside her had tipped. JJ had been talking about an unsub, yes, about a life cut into smaller, safer pieces by society, parents and fear. But could she have also been speaking about something else? Something closer to home? Emily, who had spent her whole life building whole structures of herself out of what other people were allowed to see, could hear the echo between the words.
Freedom. Wishes. Himself.
Or was it... herself?
She grabbed another mini bottle. The second shot of vodka hit harder.
Freedom. Wishes. Herself.
Not shame exactly. Quiet recognition, maybe.
She opened another mini bottle and sat on the edge of the bed. She unlaced her boots like someone untying a boat from a dock, and for a fleeting moment, she wondered if she were to walk into the Atlantic Ocean tonight, would she drift or sink? She closed her eyes, listening to the hum of the minibar. Beyond the walls of her room, she could hear someone crying into a phone next door, a couple stumbling back from a night at the clubs, a woman berating a hotel porter because something in their run-down hotel wasn’t perfect.
Emily Prentiss knew about perfection. She’d had it forced down her throat from day one. She knew the sound of a woman ranting at a maid because she couldn’t fold a napkin properly; the way dining room tables had to be set just so, with cutlery standing straight like soldiers. She could still feel how a whole dinner could hinge on her mother’s eyebrow tilt. Failure, in the Prentiss household, was served like dessert... with silver, with ceremony, and just cold enough to kill the appetite.
Ambassador Elizabeth Prentiss never raised her voice. Instead, she raised expectations. Emily had grown up wearing them like a coat that was too heavy for the hot summer months, learning to sit straight, be useful, and keep emotions hidden so they wouldn't disturb anyone else's day. Love, if that's what it was, was given in precise packages: achievements, composure and discretion. Discretion was the most important. Love was something you could lose by being messy out loud, but it could be earned back by being flawless in a room full of strangers. Her upbringing had left her with a fear of failure and a desperate need to prove herself to others.
By the time Emily was old enough to understand that other people were given love without expectations, it was too late to unlearn the belief that she had to earn it.
The minibar clinked again when she opened it. Scotch this time. She poured it into the glass tumbler the hotel supplied, because unlike vodka, you didn't drink scotch from the bottle. The first sip flooded her mouth with oak and warmth. She let it sit there until the taste blurred into memory.
She had been the one who told JJ, with a smile, "You should go for him. You'd make a cute couple." She meant it, but in the way she meant so many things... sincerely on the surface, a steady hand on someone's back when they're visibly struggling. She had meant it because she knew JJ well enough to know that her fear of letting something real happen to her didn't come from shame. It came from knowing what realness costs. She had meant it because wanting, for Emily, had always been something kept private.
She saw the look on JJ's face as soon as she said it. The flicker of shock and relief that had made Emily want to kiss the corner of her mouth to see if that would answer anything for either of them. And then she stood there, watching JJ lay her feelings on the line, listening to Will tell her to shut up before he kissed her, and in that moment, the world collapsed around Emily like dominoes. She watched JJ's face and mouth soften in a way she feared she would see for the rest of her life etched at the back of her eyelids. She would never begrudge JJ soft. She wanted that for her. She wanted to gift it to her wrapped up in a bow. She wanted...
She took another sip. Wanting had always been something best kept private.
“Tomorrow,” she said into the empty room, “tomorrow I won’t be so fucking stupid.”
The room did not argue. It did what rooms trained by diplomats’ daughters always do: it contained.
She set the glass down and breathed in through her nose, out through her mouth, a way to contain the emotions bubbling inside her.
No, she hadn't been there when JJ sought Hotch out and voiced her thoughts. The day had been a whirlwind. Interviews. Victimology. Dump sites. Unbearable heat. The ocean mocked them like a water mirage in a desert. A moment when JJ brushed her hair back, revealing the slope of her neck. Emily glanced at her and wondered how much someone could hide beneath the surface. She turned back to the crime board and for a moment imagined a life where the back of JJ's neck was a place she could touch or press a kiss on, a habit as natural as breathing.
In the SUV on the way back to the hotel, Hotch told her, "JJ has good instincts. She sees things most people don't." He almost sounded surprised with the pleasure of being able to say it. Emily hummed in response, "I know," she agreed quietly, watching South Beach blur by out of the window. If he noticed the silence that followed, he didn't acknowledge it. He put it where he put everything that didn't actively fight them or threaten harm; away.
She finally kicked off her boots, letting them lie where they fell, a small act of rebellion that would have earned her a lecture in any of the grand houses she grew up in. She stripped off her clothes and changed into an oversized t-shirt from her go bag, and then, because with alcohol flowing through her system and no one to hear her honesty, she said, "I really fucking hate that I said it. What is wrong with me?"
The sentence wasn’t elegant. It had none of Elizabeth Prentiss’ flair. Instead, it had the precision of a stubbed toe in the middle of the night. But it was true, and sometimes, truth needed to be as graceless as a person falling flat on their face. She hated that she had been the one to tell JJ to go to him. Not because JJ didn't deserve to run toward someone instead of running away in the name of self-protection. Not because Will was unworthy (he absolutely wasn't; Emily had seen that in the way his hands shook when JJ handed him Charlie's belongings in a plastic evidence bag, and he held it like it was something precious). She hated it because she had stood in a fork in the road, and yet again, as she had many times throughout her life, she directed the traffic away from herself.
When the ladies of the BAU started having girls' nights, not long after Emily joined the team, it was because Penelope believed in glitter and joy in the way some people believed in Jesus. It was an orchestrated attempt to bring light into their lives, to bury the horrors they experienced almost every week. Emily always went because she believed the ritual mattered, and it was an excuse to wear lipstick that had absolutely nothing to do with deception. JJ had always been there to begin with, lighting up the room in the way she always did. And then JJ had been there less. On the evenings she did attend, Penelope would tease her absences in the way friends always tease in an attempt to crack secrecy. But JJ always evaded with more grace than Emily could ever manage. "It's my business, Penelope," she had once said, laughing after one too many glasses of wine, "It's the one thing you lot can't profile."
They knew. Of course, they knew. Emily smiled and shoved her envy down. She had learned to do that at a young age. "Envy is impolite, darling. Envy makes other people uncomfortable. You must be satisfied with what you have."
The scotch ran out. She placed the glass next to the empty bottles, and for a moment, she considered opening the gin. She decided against it... even wallowing had limits. Elizabeth would be so proud.
That was a stupid thought. A cruel one. She closed her eyes and tried again.
Her mother had loved her... in her own way. Emily knew that love in the way a person knows a country when they've memorised for a geography exam. They can point it out on a map, recite the capital, discuss population numbers, and talk about the culture. She could list the proofs of Elizabeth's affection: private schools, nannies who wore far too much perfume and had the patience of saints, large framed photographs in which Elizabeth's smile was always just a little wider than it was in real life, and every material thing Emily had asked for. That was how Elizabeth showed love.
What Emily had not learned until she was learning in the dark, with scotch on her tongue and JJ's name burning in the back of her mouth, was that love could be given without expecting anything in return. It didn't have to be earned. That it didn't depend on how straight you sat or how much you impressed a diplomat. It was something someone might hand to you because you laughed at their terrible joke, because your hand was warm and made them feel safe, because your presence in a room made their day less grey.
And Jennifer Jareau, who could command a room full of press without ever raising her voice, who lit a room just by standing in it, who hid parts of herself and somehow still felt like sunlight... Jennifer had today accepted that realness demands taking risks. That when it comes to real, people get hurt but sometimes the risk is worth taking. She'd realised she didn't want to run anymore.
Emily rested her elbows on her knees, her head in her hands. Please, she thought... Please give her this and let me survive it. Please let her be happy. Please let me stay good at hiding it.
Her phone buzzed on the nightstand. A message from Morgan.
DM - Want to join for room service? Rossi ordered enough pie for 12.
Emily smiled as she typed out her reply.
EP - I'm good, thanks. Heading to bed. See you in the morning.
DM - Sure thing. Don't brood too hard, Princess.
Emily scoffed, as if there was any other way to brood.
She set her phone face down on the nightstand, then stood... restlessness pulling her to the window. Outside, the city pretended it wasn’t built on swamps. Miami glittered at night the way all cities do when you’re above them looking down. It’s a magic trick, really. No matter how bad the crime scenes, no matter the tears shed at the curb or the horrors lurking in the shadows... zoom out far enough, and it’s all fairy lights. If you try hard enough, you can almost believe in a world where men don’t learn to be afraid of their own hearts, where women don’t learn to make themselves smaller to fit in at the dinner party. A world where love isn’t a bribe for good behaviour.
She leaned her forehead against the glass, her breath fogging its surface. Without thinking, she traced a line through it... an old habit that used to drive her mother mad. A letter formed before she could stop herself. J. Then another. J. She wiped it away just as quickly.
She moved back to the bed with its two too-clean pillows and the tuck so tight you could bounce a quarter. She sat on the edge and let herself fall back, one arm flung over her eyes, and then she told herself a story. It was one she'd told herself in different variations, in different countries, for many years. Something that helped dull the noise inside her head and provided some twisted sense of comfort.
Once upon a time, there was a girl with dark hair and even darker eyes, who learned that love was a room full of gold and velvet ropes. You were only allowed into the room if you wore the right dress, said the right words, and did not spill anything. The girl became very good at not spilling. She was so good that she could balance a brimming glass upon her head while walking across a stormy ocean. People were very impressed when they saw her. But they never asked if she would like to drink. They did not notice that she was thirsty.
One day, inside the room was another girl with blonde hair and eyes as blue as the sky on a clear day. She did not ask the dark-haired girl to carry a glass; she took her hand, laughed and said, "Come on," ducking beneath the velvet rope like a teenager in a museum. Suddenly, they were in a gallery full of paintings that did not match, where the frames were hung slightly off-centre, and there was a couch you could put your feet on. The first girl looked around, and she wanted to live there forever. She wanted to kick off her shoes, spill her brimming glass and fall asleep on the couch with her feet up. But instead she looked at the girl who shone like sunshine, and what she said, because she had practised saying helpful things for so many years, was: "You should go with him."
The story wouldn't end there. She would not let it end there, even in the privacy of her own head. It had just ended for tonight, which wasn't the same thing. Tomorrow, she would wake up, probably hungover, and she would do the right thing. She would complete her paperwork, debrief with the team, fly back to Quantico, and have coffee at the round table where they will no doubt go over the details of their next case.
She would survive as she always did, by being useful. She would position herself beside JJ as a place she could lean if she needed to. She would be a brick wall that did not ask to be looked at.
She turned onto her side and hugged one of the pillows, and she thought of Elizabeth again, because it was easier than thinking of JJ's mouth. Which was a joke in itself, as more often than not, she spent her time actively avoiding thinking about her mother. A memory crept in without permission: Rome, a downpour of rain fell outside the chauffeur-driven car. A dress she would never have chosen. Her mother was throwing demands at her whilst Emily's stomach cramped terribly, "Don't speak unless spoken to. Be polite and remember to say thank you. Smile with your mouth, not your eyes. And for goodness sake, Emily, sit up straight."
Emily had been fifteen, and while she was firmly in her rebellious years, she still knew when obedience was expected. She did exactly as Elizabeth asked that night, as she had at so many other events she’d been forced to attend. Her stomach had ached the whole evening... a dull, persistent cramp she’d told no one about. There were so many things she didn’t tell her mother back then. At the end of the night, a woman with kind eyes had approached her, gently touched her shoulder, and said, “You’re very good at this. Has anyone ever told you that?”
Emily had nodded and replied that her mother had taught her well. The woman had considered her for a moment, then smiled and said, “Well, I hope someday you get to be very bad at something you love.”
Emily hadn’t understood what she meant. She thought it was some strange insult disguised as literature... the kind of thing fancy people said when they were trying to sound profound. Now, lying in a run-down hotel in Miami, she thought about JJ. She thought about her laugh. The way she quietly swore when their travel was delayed, gentle enough that airport staff still smiled. She thought about JJ not running tonight, finally turning toward something that might destroy her but wanting it anyway.
And as she lay there, alone in the dim light, she thought: I want to be bad at this. I want to get it wrong. I want to spill and still be let in the room.
Her phone buzzed again. A photo from Morgan: Rossi indeed, with enough pie to feed 12, Spence pulling a face. In the corner of the image, JJ's shoulder. Will was out of frame, but Emily knew he'd be there. She shouldn't have been surprised at how accurately her mind could fill him in, the way his jaw set when he was trying to be brave in front of the team, as he had done today. The way he looked at JJ like she had hung the stars.
Her thumb hovered over the keyboard. She typed, Tell Rossi, that’s a cry for help. Save me a slice for breakfast. And then she hit send.
She forced herself off the bed and washed her face in the bathroom. She brushed her teeth, rinsing away the vodka and scotch, and then stared at herself in the mirror until the features she saw slipped back into someone she recognised. The jaw she had inherited, the mouth she'd trained to behave, the eyes that were a little too honest if you knew her well enough... though that didn't worry her. Not many people knew her well enough to notice.
She stared for a moment longer and thought, 'You are alive. You are allowed to want. You are not obligated to announce it.'
Back at the bed, she turned out the lamp. The darkness wrapped around her like a blanket. She lay down and sank into the mattress. Tomorrow, she would make sure the mask was back on. It wasn't entirely cowardice. It was armour that protected her. It was armour that could give a person time to move toward someone who needed a body between them and danger.
She could love like that.
She was good at it.
Under the armour, though... under the armour was the wanting. Private... always private. She would carry that like contraband through customs. Nothing to declare, and yet she would still tremble slightly at the possibility of being searched.
Freedom, JJ had said. Wishes. Himself. No... Herself.
She curled onto her side, holding the spare pillow. If she slept tonight, she would dream of the room with the mismatched paintings and the couch on which she had her feet. JJ laughing in a kitchen where the sun shone through the windows as she made coffee. She would wake in the morning and know that the dream was not a plan or a premonition, but find comfort in it anyway.
Outside, she could hear sirens as they headed down the boulevard. Inside, the minibar hummed a sound meant for people who had learned too young to settle for substitutes. She pulled the covers up and closed her eyes. Tomorrow, she would be useful. Tonight, she allowed herself to be human. And somewhere between those two things... in the small space in her chest where duty and desire shared a heartbeat, she would hold the possibility that love did not always have to be earned.
There was no way for her to know what waited for her outside that room. That one day, in the not-too-distant future, she would stand in a hospital room watching Will and JJ dote over their newborn son, biting her tongue against the sting of it. That she would risk her life to save Will’s when a bomb strapped to his chest, seconds from detonation, threatened to take him from JJ... because the one thing Emily Prentiss could never bear was the idea of JJ tasting the grief of losing the man she’d run to. The man she loved.
She couldn’t possibly know that only days after that, she would stand in Rossi’s back garden, watching vows exchanged beneath fairy lights… each word a dagger to her heart. In return, she would do the only thing she thought she could to survive it: leave. Run. Do the one thing she had always been good at. Escape across an ocean with her broken heart packed away in her carry-on.
For tonight, none of that existed. Tonight, there was only the weight of wanting.
And that was something best kept private.