That night Emily followed Matt to his apartment nervously, her stomach in knots as her nervous hands struggled to keep the steering wheel steady. Pulling in beside him, she momentarily rested her head on the wheel, trying to calm her nerves before hoping out of the SUV, and meeting in by the buildings entrance.

If Emily was nervous, Matt was completely freaking out. Was this it? Would this be the night that Emily told him it was over? Would the last thing he spoke to her about be how they would deal with their shared disease? Thoughts like these ran through his head, and he prayed that he wouldn't lose her yet, though he believed he deserved to.

"Uh coffee?" he suggested as he flicked the lights on and they ambled nervously into his apartment. Emily nodded though she really didn't care; it made this meeting slightly less awkward, though slightly was being generous.

Matt ambled around his kitchen, grabbing a filter and container of coffee, happy for anything to keep his hands busy. As if it would keep his mind busy as well.

It didn't last long though, and the couple was resigned to standing uncomfortably, both pairs of eyes traveling anywhere but each other.

"Em, I don't know what to say." Matt blurted out, hoping she'd give him guidance.

"Yeah, me neither," she admitted shyly. Emily Lehman shy? But when Matt didn't speak again, she suddenly felt everything she'd been feeling the last few days fly to the front of her thoughts and demand to be said.

"I can't stand this Matt." There was a twinge of anger in her voice.

"I know-" he began to say, but she cut him off.

"No you don't! You don't know what I'm feeling, Matt, because you know what, I don't even know! I don't know what I'm supposed to be feeling. Can you tell me that, can you explain to me, what I should feel right now?" Her tone started off angry, but by the end it was a plea.

He shook his head, his heart breaking for her.

"I'm angry. I'm angry at you, I'm angry at myself, I'm angry at…at…at that woman! I'm hurt, because I trusted you, I trusted you Matt!" He could her the tears beginning in her voice.

"Em-" He went to take her hand try to comfort her, but she pulled away angrily.

"No! I'm not finished! God, why the hell did we stop using condoms?! Why the hell didn't you use condoms with, with, what is her name?" She demanded.

"Tracy." He told her quietly.

"Tracy…Tracy…does she know who gave it to her?" Matt had never seen Emily like this, distraught didn't come close to describing her now.

"No, not yet, she's just started telling her…partners."

"I hate her." She said quietly. "And I want to hate you. God, it would be so much easier if I could just hate you. But I can't…damn it."

He just looked at her sadly as the first tears began to fall from her eyes.

"I can't, I can't. I just want to hate you! Why can't I hate you! Damn it, Damn it, Damn it…" The tears flowed freely down her cheeks now, and it looked as if she might just collapse any minute.

Matt tried to grab her, tried to comfort her, but she pushed away again, anger adding to hysteria.

"No! No! No damn it! Don't! Don't you dare! You don't get to! You don't get to! Fuck Matt! You gave me HIV!" she spat at him.

Matt, who looked like he was two seconds from diving put his window, ran a hand through his hair, and tried to plead with her. "I don't know what to say to make this better Em-"

"Say? Say? You think an apology can fix this?!"

"No! God, of course not. But I don't know what I'm supposed to do here."

"Nothing Matt. Those tests will come back and there isn't a damn thing you can do. It's too late." She was quieter now, with silent tears pouring down her face.

"I know, and I wish I could go back in time and fix it Em, but I can't." He paused for a moment, "Do you know what I'd give for those first test results to be right?" He asked her.

She looked at him perplexed; with the first results he was still positive.

"I could live with that, I could live with being sick. But know that I hurt you, and I don't know if I can live with that." He told her quietly.

Emily was looking at him and nodding her head in that way people do when they've just gotten the cherry on top of an already awful day, and they think to themselves that they should have expected it. She looked just as pissed as she had, tears were dripping off her nose and cheeks, and she looked close to loosing it.

"You know every time I trust a guy, it always blows up in my face?" She seemed calm, which only made Matt more nervous. He just watched her and listened.

"Yeah, there was Eddie, the one guy I actually dated in high school, I slept with him and he told everyone I was easy. Then Greg, in college, he slept with my roommate, James, one of my professors, who thought I preferred an A to a relationship." She was listing them and looking at the floor now.

"Kyle was the biggest egomaniac that you'll ever meet, John liked to hit, but I wasn't with him long. Then I went on a string of one night stands to avoid that mess." She paused and looked up at him.

"And then I met you, Matt. And I questioned everything my past taught me about men, because you broke all the rules. Before I knew it, you had me trusting you almost completely…and then…this…and I have another to add to my pantheon of bad experiences."

"Em-"

"No. No. Do you know how I got through all those?" On the surface she seemed to have control, but inside she was like a ball of string that a cat had caught the end to.

"How?" Matt asked quietly.

"I hated them. Yeah, probably not a shrink-approved method, but it worked. Hating made it so much easier to swallow what they did, and move on. But, now I can't."

He continued just listening, hoping her venting would help her cope, even if she did hate him.

"Because you really aren't like them, you won't let me hate you. Why?" She was staring at him unfocused as if her sanity were hanging by a thread as tears continued pouring out her eyes.

Matt struggled for words, he didn't know what to tell her; he was barely following her.

"It's not fair. You gave me HIV, Matt! And you won't let me hate you!" She cried at him, pounding his chest with her fists, as she slowly began to disintegrate before him. She'd stopped hitting him and grabbed his shirt, falling into him, crying hysterically into his chest. "God, please just let me hate you! I need to hate you! I can't deal with this! Just let me hate you…I have to hate you Matt. Please, please, please, just let me hate you…I need to, I need to…"

Matt was nervous at first, not sure what to do, if she'd pull away again, so he slowly lifted his arms, and gently enveloped her in them. Hoping they'd take away her pain, but knowing they wouldn't. Now it was his turn to cry. He could feel the tears begin to fall from his eyes as he held her.

"I can't…I can't…" She cried, "I can't do this, I can't handle this."

"I know, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry Emily." He pleaded, knowing it would mean little to her. To his surprise she tightened her grip, pressing closer to him. He held her for several minutes as she cried, now more quietly, in his arms. He had slowly moved them toward the couch, and now sat down, guiding her as she still cried in his arms.

Twenty minutes later all was silent, as Matt carried and exhausted Emily into his bedroom. After he laid her down, and brought the blankets over her, he migrated back to his couch, hoping for sleep.

Neither had been sleeping well the past several days, the waiting and possibilities too much for them. But at this moment, the exhaustion and the little comfort they received from each other made sleep come easier.

"So, you get anything from FBI-LA's favorite couple?" Frank asked Cheryl as she entered their bar, and tiredly plopped down at the table occupied by the team.

"Other than yes they have a problem, no." She said stilling a sip of Frank's beer. "Lia has Emily said anything to you?"

"Nope, she's barely said anything lately." Lia played with the straw in her cosmopolitan.

"You think Lehman's pregnant?" Frank blurted out.

"No, I asked Matt that already. The thought never even crossed his mind, trust me."

"So they didn't give you anything?"

"Just that whatever is going on it's not illegal." She said shrugging.

"That narrows it down. Come on did you really think Emily would do something illegal?"

"I don't know. I notice you're not giving Matt the benefit of a doubt."

"Flannery almost has a bad boy thing going on, almost. But, Emily is definitely a good girl, she goes by the rules." Frank explained.

"I don't know about that, she did get involved with Matt, that isn't exactly playing by the rules." Lia corrected.

"Yeah, but illegal stuff?" Duff loved to argue with Lia.

"Maybe, if Matt got his ass in trouble, but I don't think he would."

"So where does that leave us?" Frank asked interrupting their banter.

They all looked around at each other, completely out of ideas.

"Cheryl you've known Matt longer than any of us, any ideas?"

"I don't know, the last time he was like this was when he find out Krissy was cheating on him. He barely spoke for a week."

"You think Emily cheated on him?" Lia asked, clearly shocked by the idea.

"Lehman's not the type." Frank jumped in.

"Of course I don't think that, but that's the only time I remember him acting so upset."

The table was quiet again, contemplating their friends, when a cell phone went off, and simultaneously thy all reached for belts and purses. Each yanked theirs out, but Cheryl was the winner, growling when she saw the caller id- work.

"Carrera."

"When?"

"Christ, alright, we'll be there." She hung up and turned to the group.

"We have a situation in a bodega on 118th and Chester. A man took three customers, the owner, his wife and their four kids, all under ten, hostage twenty minutes ago. Lia back to the office and do your magic, guys name is Gary Marks. Frank assemble HRT and head over there." She said punching numbers into her phone.

"Are you using Flannery and Lehman?" Frank asked her. She nodded at three concerned faces and shooed them away.

Emily groggily came out of sleep out at the sound of her phone going off, and reached for her purse, which Matt and put on the bed stand. She didn't really remember getting there, and she noticed Matt wasn't with her. Her head began to pound reminding her she'd fallen asleep after crying for god knows how long.

"Lehman." She sounded like shit.

"Emily, are you alright?" Cheryl's voice came at her really loudly.

"Fine, what's up?"

"Situation, I need you and Matt," she paused. "If you're up to it?"

"Yeah, we'll be there, where is it?"

"Are you sure, I can get Baker and Jones?"

"No Cheryl, I'm fine."

"What about Matt, he didn't answer his phone?"

"He's sleeping, we both were." Cheryl didn't comment on that fact that it wasn't even ten o'clock yet.

"Fine, I'll trust you. It's at 118th and Chester, I'll give you more when you get there."

"Right, bye." Emily hung up and groggily went to get Matt, but not before catching herself in a mirror. Her eyes were still red and puffy from crying. Great that would inspire confidence, she thought.

"Hey Cheryl, what's happened?" Emily asked as her and Matt arrived at the scene, now congested with LAPD patrol cars and HRT's vans and whatnot.

Cheryl looked them over. They didn't look so good. It was obvious Emily had been crying a lot very recently, though she'd tried to cover it with makeup. Matt didn't look as bad, but his eyes were bloodshot, so Cheryl could tell Matt had been crying too. And that scared her; it took her less than a hand to count the times Matt Flannery had cried.

"Are you two good to do this?"

"Yes." They both answered quickly, too quickly for her.

"You better be sure about that, because if your not and something goes wrong, not matter how good you two are or how much I may like you, I'll fire you on the spot. So again, are you to good to do this?"

"I'm fine." Emily said with more conviction than she felt.

"Yeah." Matt agreed.

Both were suddenly much more aware of the situation, they now had their careers riding on it.

Almost six hours later Matt was acting as primary, trying to calm down the distraught man with the gun. As it turned out, Gary Marks had been recently diagnosed with a brain tumor, and was not handling his sudden mortality well. Screaming at Matt, he'd explained that he only wanted to get enough money for his kids to live off of.

He and his wife were poor, they both worked jobs, but the rent and kids took everything the made; he didn't have life insurance. This was his way of making sure his kids were taken care of after his death.

"I don't have no insurance man, how are my kids gonna live?" Gary demanded.

"Your wife can get money from the government. They'll help her and your kids." Matt tried to soothe him.

"You don't get it man, they'll see we're poor and try and take our babies away from her."

"You kids go to school right?"

"Yeah, of course."

"And they get enough to eat."

"What do you think I starve them?"

"And you've never hit them right?"

"Man what the hell do you think I am? I love my kids, I ain't never gonna hurt them."

"Then they won't take them away. They'll try and give your wife the money she needs to take care of them."

"Right, at first maybe, but then they'll say she can't take care of them good enough. She'll loose them, that'd kill her."

"And this won't?!" Matt demanded angrily. After four hours of arguing the same points, he'd nearly had it.

"Whadda you mean?"

"You don't think know that you've got nine people hostage, including four young kids, isn't tearing your wife apart right now?"

"She knows why I'm doing it."

"Then how about your kids?"

"What about em?"

"Do you want this to be the way they remember you?"

"My Mary, she'll tell our babies I did it for them."

"Bullshit."

"What did you say to me?!" Gary was getting angry now, and Cheryl was shooting Emily, who stood near Matt, a variety of 'what the hell is he doing' looks.

"I said that's bullshit. You aren't doing this for your kids!"

"What the hell do you know man!"

"You're doing this because your scared and pissed, and you know what that's fine. You're dying you should be scared and pissed."

"You can't tell me what I should be feeling man! You don't know what I'm going through!"

"The hell I don't!" Matt snapped at him, before realizing that he was dangerously close to revealing their secret. While four people sat listening suddenly stunned at the sudden revelation, and a fifth prayed he didn't spill this secret the way he had their last one, Matt calmed himself down.

"I know that when the doctor told you that you were dying you felt your stomach turn inside out, your blood starting pumping in your ears, and you thought you might faint. I know you want to hate the world and scream 'why' at the top of your lungs, but you know it won't change anything. I know part of you wants to give up right now, because it would be easier than facing it. And I know when you look at you wife, you just want to hold her for the rest of your life, because with that moment of clarity facing your death provided, you realized that if you lived spent the rest of your life with her and died at 99, it would still be too short a time." Matt paused. "Tell me I'm wrong."

The line was silent as they waited for a response, and Matt could hear Emily's breath catch behind him as she stopped the tears before they came. She came to stand just close enough to him so that he could feel her there while still appearing professional. Then the line suddenly came alive again.

"Man, what am I gonna do?" Gary sounded like he was on the verge of tears. "I can't leave Mary alone, and I can't leave my babies without a daddy, and now I can't fix this."

"That's no true, Gary, you can fix this. You put down that gun, and come out here, and will bring you in alive. The prosecutors will be lenient. You plea, and they'll make sure your wife gets all the welfare LA can offer."

"I don't know man."

"Think about your kids, Ben and Keara need you while you're still alive Gary. Let them have a father for a little longer."

"Alright, Alright," Gary said after a brief silence. "I'm commin out."

Matt sighed in relief as Gary hung up and stepped outside, dropping his gun. HRT stormed in and all hell broke loose as it always does when they get the HT. He sat down exhausted, as Emily went out to talk to HRT and hostages. He closed his eyes and ran his hands over his face. When opened his eyes again, Cheryl was in front of him, looking concerned and visibly upset.

"Matt…are you sick?"

"Uh…when I was a kid they thought I hade lupus." He half-lied. They thought he had lupus for all of ten minutes.

"That's what that was about?" She sounded relieved.

"Yep, that's it."

"You're not lying to me are you?"

"Of course not." He half-lied again; Cheryl didn't look like she believed him entirely. He was saved by Emily coming back toward them.

"Well, good work you two." She said as she went off to talk to Frank.

"Did you tell her?" Emily asked nervously.

"No." They stood in an awkward silence for several minutes, shuffling their feet, looking anywhere but each other.

"If you two want to do your write-ups now," Cheryl told them, referring to the portion of their reports that consisted of their account of events, "you can have today off, and finish your reports Wednesday."

The couple nodded and headed back to the office to start their reports. The write-ups didn't take too long, it was a fairly short standoff comparatively, and they were soon on their way back to Matt's apartment to finish their conversation. Instead, once inside they mutually agreed on sleep first, and the two exhausted agents passed out in Matt's bed. This of course was only after ten minutes of Emily arguing with Matt that he didn't need to take the couch.

Emily woke up first, and lay quietly for a while thinking. The sun was just starting to descend, so it was still pretty light; it had to be close to six o'clock. She turned back toward a still sleeping Matt. She wanted to hate him so badly, this whole mess would be easier to handle if she had someone to blame. But she couldn't, he didn't get HIV on purpose, and certainly didn't give it to her on purpose. And if she was going to blame him she'd have to blame herself, she could have asked him to get tested, or she could have told him to keep using condoms. Either way, she knew he was just as scared as she was.

She got up, partly because her thoughts were making her jumpy, and partly because she wanted coffee. By now she knew Matt's apartment almost as well as her own, and had no trouble finding what she needed. Out of a need to keep her hands moving, she added cinnamon to the grinds, before flipping the switch on.

Matt came out of the bedroom as she was fixing her cup, still yawning and stretching. He wanted to go up behind her and wraps his arms around her, as he would have done a week ago, and nuzzle his face in her hair, which always smelled like flowers. He couldn't do that now though, though he needed to so badly.

Instead he poured himself a cup of coffee, and the couple sat at his small table, silently sipping their coffee. After they finished their first cups they sat in silence, as they often found themselves over the last week, before both rising to get refills.

"The coffee tastes different." Matt said quietly, breaking the quiet.

"Cinnamon."

"Oh…it's good."

"Thanks."

"We should talk."

"Yeah."

"Right."

"I'm so scared right now." Emily suddenly blurted out. "What if those test come back positive? What are we supposed to do?" She asked him, her voice fearful.

"Take the medication they give us and pray it works. People are living longer now with HIV they ever have before, we can still live." Emily had broken the barrier and now they were both slewing through everything on their minds.

"We're going to have to tell our insurance company, and they'll find out at work. What if they fire us?"

"They can't fire us, it's discrimination."

"They'll know we were seeing each other, they can fire us based on that."

"We'll figure it out Em, if it comes to that, we'll figure it out." He knew she was right, if the FBI found out their HIV status, they'd know that two of their agents were sleeping together, and they'd have a non-discriminatory excuse. They were both silent for a few moments, unsure of what to say.

"My brother is getting a promotion because the guy above him was fired when they found out he had HIV." Emily told him quietly.

Matt didn't respond, he didn't know how too. But, after a few moments he heard Emily's breathing shudder, and realized Emily was crying.

"Em?"

"Even my own mother thinks I deserve this Matt." She told him, a flood of tears rushing down her cheeks.

"She told you that?" Matt asked clearly upset by the thought.

"She said anybody who gets HIV in this country is an idiot and brought it on themselves." Emily cried harder remembering her mother's words; she felt sick to her stomach.

"Emily, listen to me," he told her, gently turning her face up to look at his. "Nobody deserves HIV. You didn't get this because you were careless, you got it because you trusted me, and I got it because I trusted Tracy. We do not deserve HIV because we trusted people. You have to know that."

She nodded and rested her head against him once more. He held her tight, gaining as much comfort from her as she was from him. Her questions were running through his head; what were they going to do if the tests came back positive? Could they tell anybody? Could they trust anybody?

"There is something more we need to talk about Em." He told her softly.

She looked at him again, a question in her eyes.

"When people go through…things like this, it either tears them apart or brings them closer together. We need to figure out which we're going to be, and if we can still work together." He looked down as he said the last part; he didn't want to admit he might lose her completely.

"We have to figure this out now?" She was looking at him now, her hands still resting on his chest. The last thing she wanted to do was try and figure out what was left of their relationship, she had more than enough to deal with.

"Unless we want to get interrogated by Cheryl again, or unless we're prepared to go in tomorrow morning and tell her what's going on." They didn't have a choice; if they didn't figure out what was going on between them, then their work would continue to suffer, even if they did do well that day.

When she didn't respond, just stared at the table and played with the napkin she'd used to wipe her tears, Matt spoke again.

"Em, I don't want to lose you, but if you need it, I'll let go. I won't fight you on it." He hoped to god she say no, but she nodded and his heart broke. Time seemed to stand still as he realized he'd lost her, that she was ending their relationship. He swallowed the lump in his throat.

"Matt?" She asked looking at him.

"Yeah?" He had to restrain himself from telling her not to do this, that he loved her. He'd promised her he wouldn't fight her.

"I don't know if I can go through this alone." She said looking into his eyes. Matt was a confused for a few moments, before he realized what had happened. The nod she'd given was that she understood what he was saying.

"You don't have to." He said softly, relief flooding through him. He took her hand and scooted his chair close to her, wrapping her arms around her, and she did the same, laying her head on his chest as she'd done the night before.

It wasn't perfect, but it might just get them through the next several days, until their test results came back.

I rewrote this chapter in my head about a half a dozen times before I finally got this out, there are still parts I'm not too sure about. I think there will only be one more chapter, which will hopefully be done Sunday. Anyway, thank you nickyj, TBrennanFan, Bite Beccy, justawriter, and twinmuse for reviewing, and all my readers.