There's still fire in her eyes and her ears as Emily climbs the steps two at a time, up up to the next floor, the click of her boots echoing in the tiny, dimly lit corridor. All hotel stairwells are the same, abandoned and eerie, and it hurts sharp up her side every time she takes a step, but she doesn't want to take the elevator right now, not even for a floor. She doesn't want to be trapped in that way.
301, 302, 303, 304. She counts down the room numbers until she's in front of 307. What's behind door number 1? Number 2? The only thing she's sure of is that behind this door is the relief she needs to sleep through tonight. Still, that promise doesn't stop the hesitance, doesn't budge her from how she's just standing outside his hotel room, staring down his peephole. When she finally does reach up to knock, it's firm, the only strength left in her body for now.
He's probably asleep, and she prepares herself for the fact that she might not get to see him tonight, might not be able to take his face in her hands and rub the pads of her thumbs against warm, living skin. She knows there's a good chance she'll have to go lie back in her cold sheets, explosions going off behind her eyes as she tosses and turns and fills her head with the mantra 'He's alive, he's alive.'
"Emily?" comes the question and it takes her a second to realize that there he is, the door open, brown eyes questioning. Reid's hair is dripping down his cheeks and his clothes are sticking wetly to his skin.
"Reid, sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt… I can come back in the morning," she offers, feeling slightly embarrassed and subsequently glad to feel something besides the dread that's been ebbing at her conscious since she watched the church explode. He smells sweet, like hotel shampoo, and she wrings her hands because she's still dirty, still bloody, still hurting. It didn't even occur to her to shower. All she'd been able to think about was him.
Reid shakes his head and steps back, an invitation inside. The wet and the cold coming in from the hallway are making him shiver a bit.
"It was about time I got out, anyway," he reassures her, shutting the door after she steps in. He moves to retrieve a towel from the bathroom, toweling his hair a bit before hanging it up and going to sit down on the edge of the king bed. It's soft, nice, even, but he hates hotels, hates anything but his own bed, and after tonight? No, he won't be getting any sleep. Not a chance.
Wordlessly, he holds out a hand and Emily takes it, gripping clinging needing, and sits down next to him. She breaks the silence with absolute genius: "Your hands are pruny."
Reid laughs and he's kind of worried because there's no urge to elaborate on the science and when all he offers is, "I was in there for over an hour," Emily's a little worried, too. There's more silence, a silence she fears might stretch on for hours, and then he squeezes her hand hard enough to make her look up, brows knit together in confusion.
"Why'd you do it?" he asks, and he doesn't have to elaborate.
What can she really say? What's appropriate to tell him? Emily looks at Reid, mouth pursed into a thin line as she searches for the right words to convey her earlier thought process. She did it because it was the right thing to do, because there was a gun in his face, because she could take it. She did it because Reid's the baby of their team, whether he likes it or not and no matter how he's grown. There'd been only a second of hesitation and she knows that she'd do it again, over and over again. She'll always protect them. Especially him.
"I just did, Reid. And it wasn't your fault, so stop looking at me like that," she says, her tone sharper than she intends, because she can feel his eyes burning into the bruise on her face for the second time today. It's hypocritical to get upset when she's treating him essentially the same way, but there's no helping it. She can take care of herself.
Instead of replying he squeezes her hand again, his other coming up to cup her face, turning it toward him. She sees herself reflected back in his eyes, mostly figuratively, and closes her own, leaning into his hand.
"Thought you were dead," she murmurs, the lassitude in her voice impossible. Something in him breaks.
"I'm right here," he says, and the sweet smell of him crowds up against her as he leans in to press his mouth against her temple. It stings, god it stings, but it's the most reassured she's felt in hours.
"I'm alive. Let me show you."
He takes his hand away and moves to turn all the lights on, shutting the hotel blinds tight before returning to her. She's watching him carefully, her hands braced on the bed, and her eyes flick to his fingers as he starts unbuttoning his shirt. There's a question unspoken but he answers it when he shucks the shirt off, dropping it onto the floor. His chest is pale and smooth, a sharp contrast to what hers must look like right now. She sure as hell hasn't looked and she doesn't really want to, because she doesn't want to see the physical evidence of how badly it hurts to, yknow, breathe. By all rights she should be in bed, resting and repairing, but instead she's sitting here, watching as Reid steps out of his pants. He wears boxers-briefs. Cute. The pause in undressing is another silent question and he reaches his hands out to her. She slips hers into them, answers him. He pulls her hands up to his chest, inviting, 'Here I am,' and Emily runs her hands over his skin, touching feeling loving thanking. This is what she needs, what they need. Not time spent alone in cold hotel rooms or bandages from paramedics. Not pats on the shoulder from section chiefs who will never understand.
As she touches him she starts to believe. Her fingers trace up toward his collarbones, along the sharp angles, and then she grasps his face the way she'd wanted to. He's slipped his fingers into the waistband of his underwear and he pulls them down his long legs, letting her hold onto him as he steps out of them and stands naked before her.
"Touch me, Emily. I'm right here," he tells her, and there's a patent absence of sleaze about this encounter that she wants to bottle up and keep forever. She puts her hands in wet hair and pulls, earning a groan straight from Reid's throat. Satisfied, she tugs again, and then he's pushing her back onto the bed and climbing over her.
"This just feels like a dream," she admits, even as he straddles her hips, cock half hard against the button of her jeans, her pelvis smarting from the pressure. Her hands skim up his waist and then she trails her nails over him, slight, teasing. His cock twitches and he shakes his head, pushing his hair back with the heel of his hand, that trademark awkwardness giving him away.
"You're not dreaming. We're awake. We're alive. This won't change anything. You're not going to lose me and I'm not going to lose you," he promises, hands slipping under her shirt. She jumps at the soft tickle of his fingertips, watches as he draws her shirt up to just under her breasts. Her stomach is black and blue – unsurprising – and she winces.
"Look at me," Reid says, and she does. He's distracting in his assertiveness and she wraps a hand around his cock, stroking slowly as he touches each crook of her ribs.
He's a lights off kind of guy but the light is necessary today – it doesn't make it any less strange. He touches Emily's wrist, stills her, and then sits her up to pull her top off. Finding the catch of her bra easily, he undoes it and slides it off, tossing it aside. There's a choice bruise on her stomach which he presses with his fingers.
"Fuck, Reid!"
"It's a hematoma. You're going to have to break it up," he says, and then he moves to her pants, helping her out of them. More bruises on her long legs and he leans down to mouth against the waistband of her panties before pulling them down as well.
She's just heat right now – heat from pain, heat from her clouded head, heat from him, from her arousal.
"We did the best we could," he says, spreading her legs, his hands holding her hips steady as he leans down to kiss the corner of her mouth. One hand moves down and he circles two fingers around her entrance before pushing them inside, spreading her. She's wet and ready for him but he pumps his fingers anyway, thumb riding her clit as he leans up over her, dominating her space. He's aiming to be her whole world right now, to take up every corner of her mind, until she's so saturated with him she has no choice but to revel in the fact that he's alive, that he's inside her, that he's making her come.
"Emily." Her eyes have closed and they flicker open again. He's staring down at her and he's … smiling. She smiles too and then she laughs, her hips bucking. In a way this is ridiculous, a terrible way to handle their day, but now she can't imagine anything else. He's got a third finger in her and when he replaces his thumb with the head of his cock she keens.
The church stops exploding and the children stop screaming and Cyrus' face disappears when he sinks into her, spreading her open, one hand clasping hers by her head and the other pressing on her hip. It hurts but she knows he's aware, knows he's doing it on purpose but not on purpose.
"Fuck me," he murmurs, and there's that hint of shy in his tone despite the order his words are giving her. Emily bucks her hips into his thrust and hisses and they dissolve from there, skin on skin, their wounds, their dirt, their hurt becoming one. They fuck until everything hurts and Emily doesn't know where she ends and Spencer begins.
Her release is as emotional as it is physical and she claws at his back, legs crossed behind his hips. He's still going and she reaches up to put her arms around his neck, holding him close as he fucks her, long, slow stokes that electrify her as she trembles through the remains of her orgasm.
Reid comes inside her with a growl against her ear that she's sure to remember as clearly as she'll remember the beating Cyrus gave her. Right now that's not what matters, though. He rides out his own orgasm and then collapses alongside of her, pulling her body half on top of his so he won't have to pull out of her. They pant in the silence of the hotel room, his arm around her.
"God, I'm sore," she winces, every nerve ending sparking. Some of it is good, some of it is bad, all of it means she is very much alive. They're alive.
"Don't say god," he says wearily, shaking his head. All this atrocity for religion's sake. He may know a lot and he may understand it on an academic level, but it's something he'll never understand on a human level. He takes her hand and pulls it to his chest, over his beating heart. She can feel it ramming away against his ribs and she curls her fingers, comforted.
At some point he pulls out of her and gets up. The lights wink off, but he's back before the warmth dissipates, huddling his body against hers, a hand moving up and down her spine.
"Thank you," he says after awhile, and she reaches up to ruffle his hair affectionately.
The rise and fall of his chest after he falls asleep is a soft metronome in the room and it's Emily's turn to stroke his back. She'd never really understood much about god or religion in the first place, not for a very long time, but there in the dark she comes to a realization.
If ever there was a man of god, it's Spencer Reid.