Chapter Four: 91 - 101

.

.

Night 91. Room 12. August 18, 2001. 00:09.

It's getting a bit silly, honestly, how often this is happening now. It's like at some point after that night together, these nights with the man she doesn't know the name of have become a retreat from the stress and uncertainty of the rest of her life. When she steps into whatever hotel room they're staying in now, it's like she leaves the majority of Emily Prentiss piled up unceremoniously outside the door waiting for checkout—the parts of her that she retains into the room are the best parts of her. They're the parts he's started looking at like he's awed by them, those barely-remembered words from when she was stoned on painkillers silently lined into his shy smiles and soft eyes around her.

It's a little frightening to realise that she might be starting to look at him like that too. It feels too much like committing to something bigger than she understands.

Since that night, the amount of time they've spent together has exponentially grown. Despite the fact that she doesn't pay him anymore—the money in the envelope beside the bed is the same money she slipped into it twenty of these nights ago, with him steadfastly ignoring it every time—and despite the fact that they don't even bother with using the service as a go-between anymore, with her directly texting his cell, she's beginning to think that even her budget probably can't handle this many nights in a hotel room. But she can't really imagine stopping.

She's also too shy to change them, to suggest they meet at her condo, or his, that they take yet another step towards more than what they are. Taking his cell number is as far as she goes, and she never looks it up to find the name attached to the service. It's like his anonymity confirms hers; the fact that his secrets are still hidden means hers are too, and these nights can remain delicious retreats from her diffidence.

They're quiet tonight. He's dressed gorgeously again, leaning against the balcony door watching her chain-smoke her way through a packet of cigarettes. She wonders what he thinks of her right now, still in the expensive dress she'd worn for the function her mother had invited them to but with bare feet and a smoke between her lips. She wonders if he's starting to see all the cracks.

But he comes up behind her, hand trailing her bare shoulders before lifting to touch her still-pinned hair. Far from how they had been before, he loves this, touching her. There's nothing careful about their hands on each other anymore, and no fear left in him.

"I'm sorry for tonight," she tells him, taking the cigarette from her mouth and watching the smoke eddy a little around them in the still air. She can't see him but his touch is comforting, and she leans back into it as he wordlessly begins to undo the elaborate bun she's twisted her hair into. "I should have just gone alone. That was a farce."

"I'm glad I was there," he says finally, a cicada shrilling nearby. The heat of the night is oppressive. "I'm glad you weren't alone."

Her hair slips loose, cascading around her shoulders, and he runs his fingers through it to shake the tightness out. She closes her eyes. His fingers on her scalp, sore from the pins keeping it neat all night, are heavenly. It feels like he's helping her shed the frustration of her mother's barbed tongue, peeling the anger and the bitterness away and leaving just the parts of her she wants him to see.

It's moments like this when she wonders why they still haven't had sex. It feels like a moment where they could, if either was inclined. They've certainly come close before, not even counting the night of the painkillers. Like the night they'd been caught in the rain and she'd used his heavy coat around them both to hide the fact that she was stroking him to arousal through his pants in the taxi ride home, or the night she'd taught him how to use his fingers effectively on and in her. But, somehow, they've always baulked at the penetrative act.

"I miss the pool," she announces, tearing her mind away from sex and away from her mother and back towards them. "It's disgusting out here."

"Smoking isn't helping," he comments mildly, taking the packet and frowning at it in an annoyingly contrite way. "Do you know how many quality minutes of your life you're losing with every—"

"No, and don't you dare tell me. I didn't sign up for a PSA in a suit and tie."

He eyes her now, the packet of smokes vanishing from his hand like a magic trick, sequestered somewhere on his body with the implication that she's going to have to undress him completely to find where he's hidden them. She's not entirely against that.

But, instead of goading her, he tilts his chin towards the hotel room and says, "There's a hot tub," with a strange kind of expression on his face like he can't even believe how daring he's being right now.

"Robert, that's the nicest thing you've ever said to me," she says with a laugh, grabbing his hand and leading the way.

.

.

Night 91. Room 12. August 18, 2001. 01:01.

The hot-tub is smaller than warranted, which neither of them mind because it's an excuse for her to be on his lap, teasing him relentlessly with her hands on his body and her mouth on his. She has her bikini set on; he has nothing. It's a power-play by her, but he doesn't seem to mind. Especially not right now, with her knees squeaking a little against the tub, the sound barely hidden by the jets as she sits up a bit and curls her body against him in a mock-representation of her riding the dick that's trapped hard between them.

The heady look he gives her is hallowed, a kind of awe-struck wonder lighting up his features. It should be disconcerting, this open adoration, but instead it's thrilling. Like her own personal drug-supply, knowing she can come here and find him needing and wanting her this much.

If Elizabeth's words keep burping up into her mind and souring the moment, she does an admirable job of pretending they're not. The sly, "Why, Emily, it's remarkable how one of the obscenest relationships of your life has also turned out to be the most long-standing," that had hit a nerve in both her and Robert just won't go away, even right now.

Especially right now.

Emily falters, letting her hands drift in the water for a moment as she's knocked off course. He seems to sense her distraction.

"What's wrong?" he asks, leaning his head back to study her more closely. "You've tensed up again."

"Mother," she mutters, sinking back down onto him and settling in with his dick tucked neatly between her legs. His lashes flicker a little, mouth opening slightly, before he pushes up gently back against her and then goes still, waiting for her to speak further. "She gets in my head."

"That's evident," he replies. "From the first moment I met you, you broadcasted your anger at her. It's not subtle, Em."

"Guess I resent her for fucking me up," she says with a shrug, thinking ruefully that everything about her that she hates—her coldness, her aloofness, her inability to connect—she's inherited from Elizabeth. "Don't we all hate our parents a little for that?"

"I don't," is his response. He's going soft between her thighs, probably because they're bringing up their mothers while also grinding against each other like the horny teenagers they used to be, him more recently then her. "But is now the time to be discussing how we were parented?"

"Absolutely not," she assures him, silencing them both by putting their mouths to use in other ways. It doesn't take long, not with her trapping his cock and rocking against it rhythmically while also guiding his fingers on her clit, but all the time it takes is all the time she needs to put her anger aside, shoving it out the door with everything else she tries to ignore when she's with him.

He gets her off hard but, by now, that's nothing unusual for him. These days he doesn't even have to be in the room for her to get off to him; even the idea of him inside her, or even just against her, is enough. For a virgin, he sure does constitute an alarming amount of her sexual fantasising. He simply takes up all the space in her head.

She can't remember what life was like before him, but she can guess it was far lonelier than this.

.

.

Night 91. Room 12. August 18, 2001. 01:37.

"Tell me about yourself," he says suddenly, leaning forward in the hot-tub to smile disarmingly at her.

She stares at him until he expands on that thought.

"It was one of the first things you asked me, the first time you hired me. You wanted me to tell you about myself. Well, I think we've evolved far enough from that night that it would be remiss of me if I didn't ask you the same question. I want to know about you—I've wanted to know about you for over a year now, but until tonight I've doubted you'd tell me."

They've turned the jets off after refilling the tub with clean water and are now just relaxing, Robert's knees poking up through the surface and Emily having shed her bikini after they'd made a mess of it.

"Favourite author?" he presses in the silence.

"Why do you think tonight is different from any other night?" she counters with, leaning her hand on his knee and frowning at him. They're heads to tails now, her sitting at the opposite end of the tub to him so they can look at each other as they talk. "It's not the first night we've been sexual together, so it's not that. And it's not the first night Mom's been a bitch to me in front of you, so it's not that either."

"It's exactly a year since the first night we kissed," he responds with another of those strange smiles. "In the pool. I'd wondered if you knew when you hired me tonight."

She hadn't.

"A year, wow," she says instead of anything more expansive, sinking into the water and realising that maybe her mom hadn't been that far off the mark when stating that Robert was something long-lasting. And it's an uncomfortable feeling to realise that whatever this is, this year and a few months thing with a broke kid using her to pay his way through college, it's lasted longer than any other relationship in her life, ever.

It may also be the healthiest, in some weird way.

"Also, you didn't get drunk tonight even though your mother was upsetting you," he adds. "Despite prior experiences creating precedent. I think that's important too. Why didn't you get drunk?"

She doesn't know why, but she answers. She doesn't know why she does half the things she does with him.

"I don't like the way I am around you when I'm drinking," she admits. "It's embarrassing."

"Why? We're sexually active together by most measures of the term except the most stringent and you know I'm attracted to you. Your open flirtation with me when drunk is hardly unwanted. I… while I'm glad you're not drinking tonight, since it would be as a result of an unpleasant experience and alcohol is a dangerous coping mechanism, I do wonder how it would be to have you flirt so openly with me now our dynamic has changed…"

He falters, his cheeks flaming red, and she leans forward and grins as she reads between the lines of that.

"You kinky little tease," she teases him, seeing the red beginning to spread to his ears as his embarrassment grows. "You want me drunk so you can take advantage of me."

"It's hardly taking advantage. You're very resolute about what you want."

She laughs at that, flicking water at him just to see him scowl a bit. The ends of his hair are beginning to curl, drying in the warm air and frizzing up. He's going to look like the bad end of a perm by the end of it, and she doesn't warn him just because it's funnier to see him resembling a startled poodle.

Instead, all she says is, "Vonnegut."

He looks at her, startled. She clarifies.

"I enjoy Vonnegut," she says. "Any of his work, really. Cat's Cradle resonates the most, if pressed."

"I'd have thought you'd be more into Mother Night," he says after a moment, seeming to think that over. "Cat's Cradle is one of his more divisive works. I'm not sure I've ever met anyone who has listed a preference for it above all others. But I understand."

"Do you?" She's made curious by the thoughtful tone to this. "What's there to understand about it? I just like it. It's weird."

"It's defeatist," he says simply. "It's not pessimistic or realistic—in the end, despite everything we see, all those lives we've followed, the outcome is the sudden dissolution of every life on earth. Vonnegut highlights the humans within his stories, he flaunts their importance and their flaws and their humanity, and then in this book they reach what he depicts as an inevitable, frozen end. It's world-weary and reductive. But there's also this inevitability behind his work. Vonnegut writes like a puppet-master, bringing forth the inherent flaws of humanity through a series of contrived events to bring everything to an obvious and unstoppable end. This book is a prime example of that. I think it's a book that would resonate with you at your worst, seeing as it celebrates the connections we make before ripping them apart while also depicting life as a series of chemical reactions and really nothing less. Do you see your death as so inevitable?"

What the fuck is she supposed to say to that, except to shake her head slowly?

"It's also about loneliness," Robert adds as an afterthought. "A lonely God creating humanity and then leaving it to ponder its purposelessness…"

"I think you've read a lot into my favourite book," she tells him sternly. "Honestly, Robbie, maybe I just like it?"

He looks at her and quotes a line she knows immediately, remembering suddenly the first time she'd read it and found a terrible kind of sense in it, as a lonely nineteen-year-old sitting in her college library. "What can a thoughtful man hope for mankind on earth, given the experience of the past million years?"

"Nothing," she answers.

He touches the hand she has resting on his knee, waiting until she turns it palm-side up before threading his fingers through hers. "Defeatist," he murmurs, eyes on their hands. "To be alive is to hope."

Maybe he has a point.

Maybe it's time she changed her favourite book.

.

.

Night 91. Room 12. August 18, 2001. 05:42.

She's too old for all-nighters, but here she is. Watching the sunrise dressed in nothing but a shirt she'd nabbed from the floor that she's pretty sure is his since it hangs loose from her shoulders and clings tight around the tits, and her underwear. He's slouched next to her, both of them invisible to onlookers behind the ivy-covered railing of the hotel balcony from their position on the floor. Bare legs tangled and him with one arm around her. The sky is a murky grey, but there are fingers of pink appearing distantly. The air is still and the dawn kind of quiet.

It's dangerously peaceful.

He speaks first. "I find myself thinking about you as a child," he says, head leaning close to hers and eyes locked on that lightening sky. "I was a very lonely child… sometimes, when I meet people who I resonate as strongly with as I do you, I wonder if we would have been friends as children."

"Doubtful. I was a dreadful kid." Perhaps there's a little too much derision for her childhood self in her voice here, because he gives her a wary look. "Mom always tells me how terrible I was. Too loud, too bitchy, too stubborn, too cold. She said she'd never met a child with as little heart as I had."

"I don't believe that," is his firm response. "No one who feels as strongly as you do could ever have been heartless, especially not as a child. Children are all heart and emotion. My mom used to tell me that children are so treasured because they're the epitome of humanity's soul without logic tarnishing them. Honestly, I think if she could have kept me small forever, she absolutely would have…"

"You didn't know me." It hurts to dissuade him of all his pretty notions about her, but Emily knows better than anyone that all she's been in the past is disgraceful. "I hurt people. It's what I did, I hurt my mom and my dad and anyone who dared to be my friend, not that I had many. I didn't learn to be kind until college, trust me. I was everything my mother is without any of the self-control or political mastery. Just a sour, angry little girl lashing out at anything that got close."

He doesn't say anything for a while after that, just holds her hand and lives quietly beside her until the sky is more pink than grey and the sun is beginning to reveal their shadowed little hideaway.

"Mom also used to say that children are mirrors," he says finally, looking at her for the first time since she'd spoken. There's something so gentle, so coaxing, in his expression that she can't help but lean closer and kiss him, just a little. A touch that's as fleeting as a heartbeat. And when it's over, he continues, "They reflect what they're shown… but it's not who they are. A toddler who is struck, strikes others, but not that doesn't mean she's composed of nothing but violence. Would you hate that child for her mimicry?"

"No," replies Emily.

"Then I don't think it's fair that you hate yourself for yours," he says, "because I hate the idea that you resent someone who I think I would have loved very much, had we met back then and been closer in age. We would have been spectacular friends."

She asks him, "How do you know?"

And he replies, "I just do."

.

.

Night 92. Room 120. August 21, 2001. 17:37.

She gets a mystifying text the day after that night asking if they can meet again soon. He's never texted her before—not first. It's unprecedented. Perhaps that's why she books a room only two days later despite needing to be at work the next morning, leaving the bureau and heading straight there with her gun still on and go bag on her shoulder.

He's already there waiting, cross-legged on the floor of the living room with the hotel key-card beside him and several boxes sitting around him. She walks in, notes his anxious/excited expression, and wonders what the fuck is going on.

"I didn't know how to ask you to contribute to this, so I figured I'd just…" He breathes quietly, not even standing to greet her, and opens one of the boxes to reveal what looks like photographs. "Here. My name isn't on any of these, but… well, here. Here's me." And he pushes the box towards her, ignoring her stunned silence, adding a gentle, "I hope one day you'll give me the same insight into you."

Still armed, she walks forward and lowers herself beside him, seeing his gaze skip curiously to her weapon. But she can't pay any more attention to his facial expressions or body language, because she's reached into that open box and pulled forth the side of himself he's gifted her with today.

They're photos of him. As a child, as an infant, as a toddler, as a teenager. She finds him standing with chess trophies or sprawled on the ground surrounded by books. She finds another picture of him on a giant wooden playground, a man with tired eyes holding his hand and smiling vaguely in the direction of the camera. There're photos of a smaller Robert trying to balance on a fence, arms thrown out for balance and the most focused expression Emily has ever seen on a seven-year-old plastered on his face. Here, he's three and a beautiful woman has him on her knee and is showing him how to hold a phone to his ear. There, he's twelve and dressed for Halloween as a skeleton archer. On the back of a small pony with his expression terrified, another with him holding a chess-piece shaped trophy, another with him in the cap and gown for graduating high school despite looking to be about thirteen-years-old. Hungrily, Emily devours each and every picture, seeing so many tiny shreds of the man before her in the child he had been.

When she's done with the photos and they're spread out in a wide arc around her, he opens the next box. In there, there are books. Novels and picture books, the title pages carefully tucked into the dust-jackets to obscure his name from her. They're all well-loved. When she holds them loosely, they fall open into her lap, and he takes some from her and reads favourite lines out to her in the hushed beauty of this moment.

Today, she's learned that he loves the desert he was born in—loves the wildlife he could find there, as she finds photos of him searching parks and backyards for beetles and bugs and finds a book of Wildlife of Nevada with his careful handwriting detailing the ones he'd found in every margin. She's learned that he loves his mother, finding stories he'd written for school filled with the adventures they'd gone on together, the boy she's fascinated by and the beautiful woman who is so often in the photos of him exploring his exciting world. She's learned that she was right: Robert learns wherever he is. In every picture, he's learning something. In every story, every piece of school work—even the clumsy finger-paintings she finds buried down the bottom of the box, those from pre-school—he's exploring and learning and finding the world to be utterly entrancing.

She doubts her own parents would have kept as much of her as Robert's have him.

She knows other things too, things that aren't so blatant. The photos before Robert is seven are all adventurous. They're out in the world, at libraries and adventure parks and wild trails. His father and mother are there, taking in turns to hold his hand or the camera. Post seven, she only ever sees Robert alone but he's always looking back and smiling at the whoever is holding the camera. There were two were there had used to be three, but the third can still be felt. Emily knows what it looks like when a parent is gone—she knows the look kids get in their eyes when that third is completely out of reach.

In the photos where Robert is ten, he has that look. Suddenly, he's not smiling quite as much in the photos. They're all staged carefully. Him receiving an award or at some kind of convention. The few that are candid, he's almost in them as an afterthought, and he never looks to the camera like the person holding it is important. There are some, just some, where he's home and reading a book or building a model plane, and those are the only ones where his smile really returns.

"What happened when you were ten?" she asks, lingering over one of those photos and wishing that entranced smile from when he'd been small had lasted right up until now. She'd have liked to have seen it.

"My father left," he answers after a long pause, a bitter kind of anger still evident in his voice. She wonders if he's ever talked about this before; that kind of anger doesn't sound like the kind that's been voiced often. "My mother was sick and he left rather than try to take care of her."

Emily hurts for this boy and his broken heart. "Where did you go?"

"I stayed. With Mom… someone had to take care of her."

And it all clicks. Emily puts down the painting she'd been studying the childish brushstrokes of, staring now fully at Robert and finally understanding his tired eyes. "Oh. Oh. She's why you're here…"

He nods slowly, eyes locked on her.

He's trusting her with so much right now, she's floored.

With absolute care, she puts what he's shown her aside and scoots over to him, curling against his side and feeling him loop his arm around her, both of them looking down on the scattered remnants of his entire life laid out in front of them. "Schizophrenia," he rasps, her heart breaking more with every stammered word. "There's a genetic component, you know. I'm too young for it to manifest if I've inherited it but… soon."

She clings to him, to his fear and his nightmares and his broken heart. Letting him know she's not leaving him, not right now. Not when he's baring this much of himself to her.

"Your father is a jerk," she says in reply, slashing right to the heart of that bitterness. "You don't leave the person you love because they get sick. You stay by them, shit. Even if it gets hard, maybe you leave if it's breaking you but fuck, you don't leave your kid there to deal with it. He had so many options to be more than a coward—he could have been a husband or a dad or both, but he chose to run instead. That's hateful."

"I don't hate him," Robert answers.

"Don't you? I would." Privately, she thinks he might be wrong about this. He certainly looks like he hates him; there's a simmering kind of fury in his eyes when he talks about him that suggests maybe the hate is layered so deeply into Robert's understanding of his father he doesn't even realise it's there. "It's no wonder you were lonely. I bet you never really got to be a kid after the day he left, did you?"

Robert hums, the sound rumbling through her from where her side is pressed to his chest. "Sometimes," he says. "I did have one friend, Ethan." And he points to a photo of two teenagers lounging together, books scattered between them. Emily studies the other boy, seeing a confident kind of air about him, and a comfortable friendship between the two boys pictured. "He's still my roommate now, so I guess he's always been a constant since I met him. He forces me to be young, often." And he laughs a little self-consciously, but there's a fond love there.

It's an immeasurable weight off her shoulders that he's not as alone as she'd feared.

"He doesn't know about you though," Robert says finally, frowning a little. "I don't know why. I feel like I should tell him about you, but also… I don't know. I don't know what this is to tell him."

"He doesn't know you're escorting?"

"No. When Mom had to… I had to put her somewhere she could be cared for, and that ate all of my savings from my college fund as well as a considerable amount of hers. I managed to make do for a while from the money from the sale of our home, but when that ran out, I didn't know what to do aside from, well, this. And I was too ashamed to tell Ethan because it felt like I was failing in some fundamental way to think of a solution to my own problems, and he's spent most of our adolescence saving me from myself. I couldn't put him in the position where he felt like he needed to help me with this, so my work became a secret and, by extension, so did you. He thinks I sleep in my office at the college after working late on my research."

Emily doesn't know what to say to that.

"If he's your friend, he'd want to help you," she says despite knowing how useless a sentiment it is. Some things are just too big for friendship to help, and this is likely one of those things—no matter how great the heart. "He'd at least want to be given the option."

"I have no desire to tell him about my escorting," Robert answer quietly. "None. My only regret is that I can't tell him about you. You've become… important."

She wants to tell him that he's important too. She wants to tell him how integral tonight is, how drawn to him she feels and how captivated by the child he's introduced to her, this lonely boy who has become a lonely man who somehow perfectly encapsulates everything she finds beautiful about the world. His boundless curiosity, his intelligence, his kindness, his hope.

She wants to tell him that he's everything she's ever wished life consisted of; that he's her friend and her hope and her promise of something better at the end of it all.

But she's never been good at opening herself to others. Never.

So all she says is, "Maybe it's better we stay like this."

"A secret," he says, not phrasing it like a question. She fancies he looks a little disappointed, even though he reaches out to take her hand.

"A secret," she repeats numbly, wondering if there's anything in her life that isn't hidden from someone.

.

.

Night 92. Room 120. August 22, 2001. 05:56.

Her alarm wakes them both that morning, her rolling over to find him blinking sleepily at her. He mumbles something about morning breath, but she kisses him anyway, enjoying how quiet and pliable he is in the early hours.

She's brave in that moment, despite knowing that she needs to shower and get ready for work so this is no time to be starting a conversation they'll desperately want to finish. "You've ruined me," she tells him, heart hammering at how much of her belly she's baring in this moment. Being vulnerable is anathema to her. Even this small show of it is nauseating. "I look for you beside me even when I'm waking up at home, alone."

He blinks awake a little more, owl-eyes looking startled and bleary without his contacts in. "Incredible," he says, seeming to puzzle that over fiercely. "I wonder…"

But he never finishes the thought. Her alarm shrills again and she kisses him once more before sliding out of bed and vanishing to the shower.

.

.

Night 100. Room 302. October 28, 2001. 18:15.

When she asks him what he's doing for his twenty-first and he responds 'nothing', her immediate reaction is glee. Her second reaction, once the glee has faded, is to book the first ever room in the first ever hotel that they'd met each other in, all that time ago.

He arrives bang on time with a wide, silly grin just for her and kissing her as soon as she opens the door, swooping in to whirl her around with her feet off the ground and her hand on his back the only thing steadying her. It's a giddy, vivid moment, and she can't help but laugh at his enthusiasm.

"Having a good birthday then, are you?" she asks him, earning a happy series of nods in return. "Well, happy birthday, Robbie-my-lad—here's your present."

It's nothing special, just a bunch of classic horror books in lovely new hardback reprints, but he's so excited about them that she feels like she did good anyway, especially when he gives her a rousing rendition of several Poe stories from his favourite of the texts, complete with voices.

Her other present is this: she's got enough wine here to put even her on her ass, let alone him. And, after an amused glance at her as she brandishes the corkscrew, he agrees to take her on.

They're both very aware what's going to happen next.

.

.

Night 100. Room 302. October 28, 2001. 23:38.

She teaches him to dance to What I Like About You, swinging him around the room with no thought for his poor head on the wine they've hammered down. He's exactly how she'd hoped he'd be with alcohol in him stripping away all his neuroticisms: just as sweet and silly as she'd imagined he'd be. He's affectionate too, all wide hands and happy smiles, kissing her whenever she pauses to catch her breath.

She's turned the thermostat up against the chill outside, but that only means that they've heated up fast as they've danced about, shedding clothes quickly until she's pretty sure they're just tantalising each other at this point. She doesn't really need to lose her tank top or bra, but she does, his eyes lingering on her breasts with a happy kind of focus.

"Like what you see?" she coaxes him, gesturing him over and away from the stereo pumping music at a moderate level into the hotel room. He comes when called, brushing a finger over her nipple before bowing to brush his lips against hers. He tastes like wine, swaying a little against her before sliding his hands around her hips and lifting her up against him.

"I like you very much," he murmurs into her mouth, tongue teasing at her lips. "I like all of you. Your smile and your nose—" She raises an eyebrow at that, but he seems sincere. "Everything about you is so, so wonderful…" And, as he's talking, he's undoing her pants and slipping them down her hips, expression cunning. "Everything."

"I thought you wanted me to flirt with you?" she points out, helping him along despite her teasing.

"I did," he says. His eyes are bright, his cheeks brighter, and she leads him over to the wine again and shares a glass with him, careful not to overdo it. Neither of them is all that interested in continuing to drink anymore now that they've managed to get the other's pants off, although he takes a delicious kind of care in tasting the wine left over on her lips. "I do. But now I'm here, all I want is you."

"Tease," she breathes, arching against him and running her fingers through his hair. "Well, here I am, and here you are, and you have no idea about the things I dream about doing to you."

His eyes go wide at that.

"All you have to do is tempt me," she says to him, sliding her hand between them and running a teasing thumb along his dick.

He does.

.

.

Night 100. Room 302. October 29, 2001. 00:00.

Midnight finds them in the shower together, with his hands in her hair and his cock in her mouth.

The fact that his eyes go so wide when she swallows him down for the first time, his dick all wet with the slight tinge of salt to the back of her tongue, is a pretty hint to how new this is to him. He looks utterly stunned, completely transfixed by what she looks like sliding along his cock, and she's for the first time genuinely enjoying sucking someone off. Normally this is a task, something she just does because it's expected—and she'd even kneeled this time with a kind of wry reluctance—but now that she's down here, teasing the tip of his dick with her tongue with her hand between his legs stroking his balls and feeling them tighten in her palm, it's not as dull as she remembers it being. For one, he's gorgeously receptive. The water pattering against his back as he does his damndest to make sure she doesn't get accidentally waterboarded and with his hand stroking her hair, his mouth moving without making any sound as he muffles his gasps and moans; this is a treat to see and, she assumes, enjoyable for him too.

She pops free, licking up the length of him with a careful focus on the tip just to be gratified by a trickle of pre-cum on her tongue, before glancing up to him to find his expression tantalisingly unfocused. With a dull ache in her jaw reminding her its been a while, she kisses up his dick for a moment before pushing her hair back so it stops getting in her mouth—he sees her fighting with it and his stroking hands come down to pull it back for her, keeping it out of her way without having to be asked—and asking him if he wants to come in her mouth. She's not feeling very drunk anymore, just very bold, and he looks like he's at much the same point she is.

He's silent, eyes doing that panic whale-eye wideness again as he contemplates that.

"I don't know," he says finally. "I… don't know. Isn't that unpleasant for you?"

She shrugs uncaringly, but that doesn't seem to be the right answer because he frowns, his dick flagging for a moment until she strokes it back to attention, her knees twinging a bit on the floor of the shower.

"What do you prefer?" he pushes, thumb stroking the skin of her throat from where he's still holding her hair.

"It's not about me," she counters. "I'm sucking your dick, not mine, birthday boy."

"Any sexual contact between us is about the both of us," he snaps back, so fierce in that second that she's more aroused by that than his dick in front of her. She wonders what it would take to tempt him into aiming that ferocity her way during sex—while also wondering what that says about her. "I want my pleasure to be your pleasure, just as much as I find it arousing to see you aroused. I have no preferences set, no experience to draw from—just yours. And if that's unpleasant to you, I have no desire to experience you suffering it for my sake."

She stares at him, feeling a little off-centre. Outside this shower, time is definitely ticking on, but right now, in here, it feels frozen. Finally, she speaks.

"I don't mind," she says, her heart hammering like she's admitting some great secret. "The texture is unsettling, but I like the tactile feedback of feeling my partner climaxing. I had a partner who preferred to come… well, he liked seeing his come on me. I hated that. I hate that, how it feels. Swallowing, fine, but not… on my face." She has to bite back the please and the if that's okay that almost slip out of her mouth, wondering when the fuck she'd gotten to be so mousey in bed. When had she decided it was fine to lay down and let her partners' preferences overrule hers?

At what point had she stopped caring without even realising?

He gives her an odd look. "Why would you let him do it if you hate it so much? Your tenses suggest it happened multiple times, and I can only imagine the titillation from that comes from the visual of it… which I hardly doubt would have been nice if you were unhappy."

She doesn't relay have an answer for that. "Marking territory," she mutters, seeing his expression darken a little. "It's fine, Rob. Just bear with me, okay. I'm learning, same as you."

It's a weird feeling to realise how true that is. Despite her age, despite her experience, everything about this is new.

He nods, smiling at her with the water still thudding out a rhythm against his back.

"So long as you're enjoying it with me," he says finally, closing his eyes and letting his head tip back just a little as she swallows him down again, this time with her own body throbbing along with him. And this time, as he moans out her name in a way she's never going to forget, not ever, and chokes out a warning that he's close, there's nothing she doesn't enjoy about feeling it happen—especially not when his hands on her shoulders pull her up before he's even finished coming, letting her spit and rinse her mouth with water from the shower before dragging her into a kiss that's so fierce and flavoured with him, a kiss that's so breathlessly frantic on his end that she knows he's still on the tail end of his climax. Especially not when he breathes her name again into her mouth—a gasped Emily—that barely hides what he chokes back after.

She'd laugh at him, honestly, because it's such a virgin thing to almost let loose the word love during sex, but, honestly, she'd almost done the same thing too.

That terrifies her.

.

.

Night 100. Room 302. October 29, 2001. 00:21.

She's not surprised when he leads her to the bed after their shower, but she's also never been this excited to have a man between her legs before. He's kissing up her inner knee and thigh, hand sliding the towel up slowly as he goes, and wild horses couldn't drag her away from what she knows his pretty mouth is going to do to her.

"Have you ever eaten a woman out before?" she asks him, already knowing the answer before he shakes his hand with his damp hair flipping about. "You might not like the taste. It can be off-putting, I'm told."

She's not sure what the sharp look he gives her means, but is distracted from asking by him tilting his jaw into a stubborn line before asking, "May I taste you then?"

Jesus, fuck, she thinks distantly, her body searing hot at every point at the polite query. She remembers back to when she met him, how breakable he seemed—still seems—even as she nods and lets her legs fall open. The way he peels the towel back is decadent, studying her with such a curious kind of ferocity that she has to measure her breathing so she doesn't look like she's panting. But he doesn't dip his mouth forward, his tongue flicking out to taste what she has to offer—instead he leans his cheek against her knee and uses one long finger to trace down the centre of her, giving her a startled look.

"You're so…" He pauses, flushing red before whispering, "wet," like he's scared someone will hear him.

"I can't help what you do to me," she tells him, barely managing a smile through her searing arousal when he gives her an awed look and the soft cock between his legs twitches awake despite having just come before. Oh, to be twenty-one again…

And when he slides that finger into her before bringing it to his lips, tasting her without ever looking away from her face, that's probably the point she stops being able to take conscious note of what he does to her. She's not even really sure what he says after that—something like fascinating—just that suddenly she's looking down on a mop of wavy hair between her legs and his neck is crinked at a ridiculous angle in order to let him trace his tongue along the same path his finger had just taken.

"Talk me through what will make you feel good," he says, his breath warm on her clit, but immediately follows that by licking her curiously.

Instead of answering, she moans involuntarily, feeling another flush of wet from deep inside her join the rest.

"Oh my god," she hears him gasp, before suddenly giving up on being precise or careful and just launching forward. He's a wet, hot, frantic pressure of tongue and warmth, with no real strategy other than being as energetic as possible while covering as much ground as possible—and it works, oh fuck, it works. The noises they're making would be disgusting if she wasn't as aroused as she is and she has absolutely no control over her breathing anymore, just resigning herself to panting frantically—before realising that she's, for the first time ever, gasping his name along with her moans, hips bucking into him as his tongue slips into her, his hands bracing himself against her hips. She's gasping his name, or the name she knows him as. He's hard again with his cock rubbing against her leg and leaving a thin line of wet behind.

It's too much, it's too much, and she grabs him and hauls him up onto the bed. The towel is gone as they fall into a frantic fumble of arms and legs, his arms around her and her tumbling into him, the bed complaining about their enthusiasm under them. And she's kissing him breathlessly, not even noticing the absolute mess she's made of his face, with him atop her and her legs wrapped around him. With every twist of their bodies, every shift of their hips, they're wet and hard and rutting against each other, his cock between her legs and sliding right through the centre of her.

When his tongue dips into her mouth, teasing at her lip just like he had her clit, she bucks into him and feels his dick catch and slip, just the tip, inside her.

They freeze, Robert rigid and her trembling. He pulls out carefully but then, before she can apologise, shifts his hips so his dick is sliding along her—slower than before but purposeful now, as he finds what he's looking for and pushes in just a little bit more with a low groan twisting out from deep inside her.

"It's okay," she pants, realising how sore and tight she is from holding back. "Robert, oh god, oh fuck. It's okay. I want you inside me, fuck. Just push in, just a bit more, please."

"Condom," he breathes but, despite this, she feels him slide in just that tiny bit deeper, pull out, push in. "We need a condom for, ah, sex…"

The way he breathes the word sex fucks her up, his hips quickening with it like his brain has grabbed the word and suddenly he's all animal instinct. Hips shifting, his dick teasing her, his head drooping so he's gasping hard against her shoulder.

"I'm on the pill," she tells him—which he knows, but they've never really discussed with intent. "I use protection with others. I'm clean and I want to feel you, just you." Her turn to close her eyes and press her face into him, feeling her nails bite at the skin of her back as she scrabbles at him, suddenly desperate to feel him close. Everything else feels unimportant compared to this. "You're so different to everyone else, I want this to be different too."

It's never been like this with any one else before. Never.

He gives her a strange look, an almost overwhelmed look tempered with the glazed arousal, but suddenly he's rolled her onto her side, hugged her so tight there isn't an inch of air between them, and his dick is pushing slowly into her. Incrementally out and in, and he slips out twice with whimpers of frustration before she reaches down a hand to help him—her eyes locked on his face as she takes him in hand, guides him straight, and tells him to thrust.

And he's in. For a glorious, heartbreaking moment, he's inside her and getting deeper—she's never come without clitoral stimulation, but she's never been this fucking aroused this early into sex—and she cries out his name is a voice that's going to carry because she's already almost there. Distantly, she wonders how fucked he is, his cock's first foray into sex being into a vagina that's already tightening and rippled around him as her climax builds—only to realise he's said something stunning.

She tries to switch her brain back on, to hear him say that again before she comes completely.

"Wh-what?" she stammers, feeling him beginning to move in her, shallow, uncertain thrusts that are more instinct than anything else.

"Spencer," he says again, her brain misfiring hard around how perfect that name is for him, how elegantly it encapsulates all his weirdness and wonderfulness all at once. "My name is Spencer."

It feels obscene that the first time she's going to cry out his name is during sex, but it's on the tip of her tongue as she shudders into a slow kind of undoing, kissing him as he chants her name and pushes back in—

There's a shrill poly-syllabic tune by her ear that she's never heard before, jerking away from it and feeling him go still. It takes a moment, both of them staring at each other blankly with his eyes all dark and his body covered in sweat, hair lank against his flushed forehead and chest heaving, before they realise what it is.

"Your cell," she pants, trying to shake normality back into her life from where he's ripped it out of her. "Is that your cell?"

His phone has never rung when he's been with her before.

"I, uh," he breathes, before suddenly coming back to life and pulling out, fumbling across the bed to grab for it. She winces as he answers with a cut off, "This is Dr Re—", glancing back at her with a flinch and turning it into, "Sorry, who was speaking?"

She curls her knees up, feeling weird and off-kilter. There's a hollow emptiness between her legs she's not ready to let go of the hope of filling just yet, glancing slyly at him and shivering with desire when she sees his slick cock still hard and covered with her. If he didn't sound so frazzled already—if he'd answered the phone to her with his voice sounding like that, she'd have known instantly he was in the middle of something carnal and she wonders if the person on the other end knows too—she'd have crawled over there and kept working him up with her tongue until he was ready to finish what they'd started, phone call or no phone call.

But the husky hunger suddenly drops from his voice, a sharp worry overtaking it. She stares at him as he scrambles from the bed, asking now about medications and conflicts and stammering about flights, his dick now definitely soft, and there's a not-so-small part of her that's shattered that their morning has come to a sudden end.

But his worry is more pertinent. While he's standing there with his cell in one hand, pressed to his ear, and his pants in the other as he circles in panicked spirals looking for his belongings, she tamps her body down and gets to work. It takes a second to help him gather his clothes as he continues his frantic conversation with the person on the other end—it sounds medical, so she's assuming his mother's doctor—before she slips from the room to shower fast and get dressed herself.

When she comes out, clean now and half-dressed, he's standing there still naked staring at his darkened cell-phone. There's a numb panic on his features that she knows intimately.

She takes charge.

"Shower," she tells him firmly, taking the cell. "Shower and get dressed. Whatever is happening, I assume it's happening in Vegas, which means there's already going to be gap between your response as you travel there. You can take ten minutes to wrap your head around it."

"I need to—" he manages, staring at her now with that same vacant terror, the empty wine bottles around them a sign of how unprepared for disaster either of them is. "I have to—"

"Shower," she says again, waiting until he's vanishing into the bathroom before sitting down and reaching for the phone book.

And the night ends.

.

.

Night 100. Room 302. October 29, 2001. 01:14

By the time he emerges, she has a list of available flights from here to Vegas, having guessed that's where he's heading since he didn't correct her before. They're lined up neatly on the notepad she's been writing on, each with the ticket price beside it. He comes to stand next to her, staring down at them.

"Your fastest options are the most expensive," she warns him, tapping her pen on them. "You don't have emergency savings to draw on, do you?"

"No," he says, stark panic replacing the numbness. "I have money put away, but it's earmarked for the payments to mom's care—if I pull from it, I can't make—"

She cuts him off, circling the top option. "That's what I figured," she says, pushing the pad towards him. "Book this one. I have them tentatively holding it for you under my name—if you call now, you'll get it, but you need to be fast before it leaves at half four."

"I can't afford this," he responds, without moving.

"I can," she says. He doesn't look surprised, just resigned. "Call them. I'll write you a cheque."

"Emily…"

But she gives him the same stare she gives the perps at work, the stare she's seems to leave there every night when she slides out of the skin of Agent Prentiss and instead becomes the woman who lets people take what they want from her—until him. This is freely offered, freely given, and he needs to understand how important that is to her that he take it.

In the end, she doesn't need to explain. He just nods, looking somehow crushed like he's failed utterly, and rasps out, "I'll pay you back, somehow. I promise, I'll get another job and—"

"Don't you fucking dare. I swear, Spencer, I don't want to see a cent from you, okay?"

He breathes in sharply. She realises: she just used his real name.

"I knew it would sound amazing in your voice," he says, a soft hint of his real smile slipping through the worry, but then the fear is back and he's taking the phone and time is moving fast again.

And, when he's ready to go, she kisses him goodbye and tells him to call her when he lands. They part without fanfare, Emily only pausing once to glance back at the bed they'd almost found each other within for the first time.

But she's sure they'll have another chance.

.

.

Night 101. Room 302. November 13, 2001. 20:15.

He hadn't called her after his mother so, when she gets a text from him asking to meet, she's immediately worried that she's going to be comforting him through his grief. The booking she makes is the fastest one yet, texting him back within the hour telling him she can meet him that night as soon as she's finished work.

Five minutes after that, she'd been called into her supervisor's office and had a conversation with him that's thrown her completely off-course.

And now here she is. Sitting in the hotel room waiting for him—he's late, which is astoundingly unusual but tonight she's glad for it because it gives her time to gather her thoughts—wondering what the fuck she's going to do.

He's over an hour late, stepping into the room with his shoulders tense and looking wired, a plastic shopping bag dripping with condensation hanging from one hand. She keeps her distance when she greets him, the two of them lingering at opposite sides of the kitchen island as they quietly luxuriate in all the awkward silence. The bag he's holding smells delicious, and he holds it out as he apologises for being late before falling quiet at her non-reaction.

"How's your mom?" she asks finally, breaking that silence.

"She's okay," he answers. "I worked out a new medication regime with her doctor that should avoid any more conflicts while still maintaining her quality of life."

"That's good."

The silence returns, his brow furrowing with a new kind of anxiety overlaying the tension as he puts the bag onto the counter and then stands there with his hands hanging by his side. Emily's news lingers over her like an oncoming storm blowing away the joy of their last meeting, opening and closing her mouth three times as she tries to work out how to say it. She's never been good at this bit—the bumpy parts of caring for someone. The uprooting of it all. Goodbyes she might be practised at, but that's really only because she's had so many she's learned not to care that much at the outset.

This time? She cares. She cares so much.

"I'm sorry I didn't call," he blurts out suddenly, covering the room in two great strides and reaching for her hand. She lets him take it, stepping closer to him and closing her eyes as he holds her close. Treasuring his continued heartbeat against her ear. "I meant to, but I was exhausted on the plane and then dealing with Mom… and when I got home, uh. Something happened that we should talk about."

"Same here," she says, feeling nauseous now the moment is here. She doesn't want to hurt him. She doesn't want to hurt herself, but it's a bit late for that. "You first."

He nods, following her to the bed and sitting beside her. Neither look at the other.

His voice is quiet.

"I got a job offer," he says. She can't tell what the tone of voice he's using means—if it's worried or excited or sad or a bit of everything. "An… an amazing one. And I don't even know how to begin telling you…"

Her heart skips a little. That's promising. "Oh," she says, realising both what this means and where he could be leading them—maybe this goodbye isn't just hers. "Salaried? Benefits?" He nods to both. "Enough for you and your mom's care?" Another nod. "So, you're quitting the escort service?"

"I've quit already," he says. "It was the first thing I did once the position was confirmed. It's not the kind of job where I want this work arising again in the future."

"Oh." She stares at her knees, steeling herself. "Well, I guess that's opportune, that we both go our separate ways at once…"

She's trying to minimize it, but it still hurts.

"Yeah—wait, what?" His head snaps around, eyes narrowing as a stark panic darts across his features. For a second, he looks his age: painfully young and so fucking vulnerable she wants to gather him up and shelter him from the world. And that's the problem, isn't it? All her pretty fantasies about a life with him, all her hopeful dreams… in the end, he's a kid just starting out with everything he needs to protect, and she's a jaded thirty-one-year-old woman getting pushed out of the door to make room for others with more potential. "You're leaving?"

"Transfer," she answers numbly. "To the Midwest. It's 'optional', but I'm under no illusions about that… if I don't take this, I'll be sidelined. So I'm taking it."

"Oh."

He doesn't say anything else, just looks quietly heartbroken beside her, which is confusing.

"Isn't your job taking you away too?" she presses, wondering why he looks like he's had something he was excited for suddenly ripped away from him. "I assumed that's what you were leading towards."

"Hm?" He gives her a vacant look, before half-shrugging. "Oh, yeah. Yeah, it is. I guess, yeah. What about your dreams of the BAU? You can't give up on that—you'd be a wonderful profiler, you really would."

His hand is fumbling for hers again. For the last time, she lets him hold it, ignoring how much this hurts. Ignoring all the space in the room left over for their emotions to echo about in.

Ignoring the bed they're on and the promise of more it offered them only a month ago.

"Dreams are just future heartbreak," she says, already packing this moment away with all the other moments they've had. Boxing it up into some dark corner of her mind to sit with every other misery. "Here's my last advice, kiddo—don't dream. Just live. It's easier."

"Noted," he says. "But maybe one day you'll come back?"

She ignores the desperation in his voice. It'll only hurt him more if she acknowledges it.

"I don't think so," she tells him firmly before taking back her hand. "I've never been fond of DC. Too many people like my mother. Anyway, we should go. There's no point lingering. I doubt we'll see each other again."

She goes for her keys, her bag, her coat, almost dropping her purse in her hurry to escape. There's a burning behind her eyes and a building lump in her chest that she's ignoring, turning and finding him still sitting on the bed staring after her with a woeful expression that cuts right into that lump and releases pain instead of discomfort. Gasping against it, she grips her keys tight, looks away so he doesn't realise her eyes are watering, and says, "Seeya, Robert. Don't overwork yourself, okay?"

Her choice of name is very deliberate.

"You don't need to go, I bought dinner with me and thought we could—"

But she's already out the door, letting it bang shut behind her to be sure he understands how final this is. When heartbreak is coming, it's best to be over with fast. That's how she's always done it in the past, and she refuses to change that now. No lingering. Just a clean, vicious break as she slams the door on that particular fragment of her life, resigning it firmly to the past.

It hurts more than she'd ever imagined it would.