Emily
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169.
They were lying on the beach and there was sand in Sergio's ears, Emily watching him leap and spin and chase himself about with Aureilo and Hal calling advice from the sidelines. Curled up on the beach-towel behind her, the boys were asleep, or almost there. Occasionally, she could see Spencer's eyes open minutely, tracking the dæmons as they played like idiots.
"What are you drawing?" he asked, his voice all the husky kind of sleepy. Instead of answering, lazy with the fading summer sun, she tipped the sketch towards him. It was Hal as a wolf, and it was terrible. But, getting better. Maybe soon she'd work out mammals. "You should draw Aur."
"Draw me, draw me!" Aureilo hollered, abandoning being groomed by Hal to bounce his way over to Emily and striking a pose in front of her. Hal sighed, hefting herself upright and slowly ambling after him, an eighty-year-old dæmon tied to a sixteen-year-old boy. A brisk wind blew against her, throwing her fur into spiky tufts and blowing a spray of sand and salt over the boys, who both yelled, awake now.
"You guys look so gay, all huddled up like that," Emily pointed out, peering over them to see if anyone was watching. "You're going to get us jumped."
"We're not huddling," Spencer said, sitting upright and yawning with his peeling nose scrunching at the gesture. They were all sunburned, although Aaron, the ass, was already tanning instead of going red. Spencer had freckles coming up, the lightest dusting across his nose and cheeks. "Don't worry, Em, we're super circumspect."
"Oh yeah, so circumspect," Aureilo said. "Like you the other day, huh? Mr 'Aaron's not here'."
Spencer turned an interesting shade of embarrassed, considering that he was already sunburned.
"What'd he do?" Emily asked Aureilo, hearing Hal groan.
"Don't you dare—" Spencer tried, but Aureilo was already gleefully tattling as Aaron covered his face with his hands and ducked out of sight and Spencer attempted to catch the mouse and bury him in the sand.
"So, there's Spencer, all ready to get the world's worst blowjob," Aureilo announced — and Emily was already laughing, brain locked on the mental image of Spencer reading a manual on 'How to Suck Dick' while Aaron waited patiently for tips.
"Stop stop, oh no, stop," Aaron was wheezing, Spencer wordless with horror.
"—kneeling at the end of the bed, buck naked, and, boom, Dad knocks—"
"Oh my god," said Emily joyfully.
"—and, the absolute genius he is, Spencer launches up, shoves Aaron's head down, and drags a blanket over him."
"'Hi, Dad,'" Aureilo mimicked unexpectedly in a high falsetto. "'I didn't know you were home. No, Aaron's not here, why do you ask?' And, the whole time he's saying this, Aaron's hunched up under the blanket between his legs and—" The mouse-dæmon had to stop to laugh, Spencer's whimpers now sounding tearful. "And, Hal's sitting on the rug staring at him."
"Oh no," said Sergio.
"Yup," Aaron replied. "Staring at him like a dumbass."
"I was startled," Hal said snootily. "I don't know what you expected me to do."
"Not be a lump—" Aaron began to say but another rough breeze sent the tide sweeping up towards them, touching the tips of their toes and drenching the towel. "Fuck!"
"Storm," said Spencer. There was something so intense in his tone that, before the wind had stopped winding around them, they'd all fallen silent and turned to watch it. "I love storms."
"Same," murmured Aaron. "Should we leave before that hits?"
Emily watched the clouds building over the choppy surf then snuck a look at her friends. Their hands were touching and, even as she watched, Hal lowered her head and nudged Spencer's leg. It was a split-second touch. Emily still shivered, looking around at the crowded beach beginning to pack up and filter away from the danger of inclement weather. "Let's stay and watch it roll in," she declared, ignoring her unease. What was a storm?
Nothing they hadn't survived before.
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170.
There was a mortifying moment. She didn't know what made her do it, just that she'd been dealing with this for a year now and it just made sense. If she felt this, surely, surely, he felt some semblance of the same? It seemed impossible that a heart could beat so strongly for someone and not have the other person feel similarly — just impossible. And she was pretty, in some lights, haughty in others. Intelligent, sometimes, and saucy. Apparently. All things people had called her. Positive things, right?
It all led to this moment, hiding down the back of her garden in the stupid playhouse her dad had built her, wiping snot onto her sleeve and making it gunky and gross. Makeup probably everywhere because of course she'd worn makeup, the stupid bitch she was, and she grabbed her sleeve and scrubbed furiously at her face, determined to remove it. Stupid, stupid, stupid, and Sergio watched her judgmentally.
There was a rustle outside and she froze. Oh god. Oh god. First, that terrible moment when she'd been so dumb and now … oh no. Catching her crying in a children's playhouse, oh fuck.
"Emily?" he asked quietly. She knew he was crouched outside. "Come out."
There was no coming back from this.
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171.
If Emily had known more about Professor Harper Ness, then maybe she'd have been less mortified about her conduct that day. Thirty-three years old, in his life he'd seen people being far more foolish than Emily Prentiss the day she'd mumbled a panicked kind of declaration of love and then bolted from the room at his quiet, "Ah."
"When I was thirteen, I was sure I was in love with my math teacher," he said, almost to himself. Within the playhouse, where the gardener had pointed him, there was a focused kind of silence. "I even wrote poetry. Terrible, terrible poetry. Left it on the desk … at the time, I was sure that I was so, so sneaky about it, but I really wasn't. There was no way it wasn't obvious." A low groan sounded out from inside the recesses of the house. "What I'm saying is that it's normal, Emily. What you're feeling? It's normal. Ask the boys. I'm sure one of them has had a fancy for a teacher or two in their time."
"It's not normal," came the muffled reply. "That's such an asshole thing to say, that this is just a phase, I'll get over it. I won't. I mean, I will, probably, but I won't ever get over how shit this feels. And you're going to leave now because I've been a total idiot and that's going to ruin what Spencer has here too because no one else lets him be smart and—" She appeared, hair wilder than usual with cobwebs on her nose and Sergio a tarantula on her throat. Harper winced at that, and at the misery there.
Harper Ness, in all his years, had always hated loneliness. And Emily?
He could see it written all over her, from the makeup that usually screamed 'look at me' — although, today it was demure and feminine — to the clothes that snarled 'you don't know who I am' — although, once again, she was today in a neat sky-blue dress with plain tights. She was a child that no one had bothered to love enough, and he was a kind adult who'd appeared in her life at exactly the wrong time. Whether or not it had started out as teenage hormones, he knew it likely wasn't now. When someone offered a lifeline, the person drowning would grab it and hang on with all their might; right now, the only adult in her life who had time for her, he was likely the one thing keeping her afloat.
If he was a more cowardly person, he'd have tendered his resignation and left. It was a dangerous game, staying within range of the explosion he was sure would occur if she was hurt beyond what she had the ability to deal with at her age. But he wasn't a coward. He'd faced scarier people down than sixteen-year-olds with crushes, and he didn't intend on hurting her.
"I'm too old and boring for you," he told her. "And I'm incredibly, absolutely already taken even if those two previous things hadn't already made what you're wishing for impossible. But, I'm also not going anywhere."
She paused, her expression narrowing suspiciously, makeup smeared everywhere and eyes glassy. "Promise?" she asked and had never sounded more like a child to him than then with that single, pleading word. He wondered how many people had lied to her before to make her so unsure.
"Promise," he replied, holding out his hand to help her out of the dirt.
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172.
"Why are we going to a party again?" Spencer asked. "If we stay home, I can teach you guys how to play D&D."
"That," Emily declared, "is exactly why we're not staying home. Did Aaron say he'd meet us down here?" Down here was in the parking lot outside Aaron's apartment, looking up at the rows and rows of blank-faced windows waiting for Aaron to jog out of the gated front door. Spencer was awkwardly twisting in the driver's seat to examine his hair in the rear-view mirror, only settling when Emily leaned over to help him fix it. It had gotten long this last summer, hanging in loose waves around his ears. Very cute, but she was sure he'd get it cut soon which was a pity. He'd look cute with a ponytail. Or a mullet.
She couldn't help but snigger at that mental image, earning a frown from both him and his mouse. "Pity Aur won't change," she said, tweaking the silly tie he was wearing, dancing turtles gambolling their way across it. "You could have him match the tie you're for some reason wearing."
"It looks nice," Spencer protested, looking down at his salmon-coloured button-down and green tie. It did not, in any definition of the word, look 'nice'. "Aureilo said it looked nice."
"Aureilo lied."
"I did," Aureilo confirmed happily. "It looks awful."
They began to bicker, Spencer declaring that he had to go home and change despite them already being late. Emily sighed and shed her leather jacket.
"Here," she said. "Lose the tie and put this on. It'll fit, you're tiny." It did. One day he'd grow, but today was not that day. "And here—" She ruffled his hair, working the comb she kept in her waistband out to tease it around into a messy kind of nonchalance. "There. Now you're a greaser."
"Goodie," said Spencer doubtfully, wiggling around and making the jacket creak at him. Emily took the tie and threw it into the recesses of the backseat, hopefully lost forever. "Should one of us go and get Aaron?"
There was a notable pause before he said this. They never discussed it, but they both knew what happened behind closed doors in the Hotchner household. Or, had happened. Aaron said it wasn't happening anymore.
But Aaron could have lied.
"I'll go," Emily declared, curiosity warring with sense and coming out the victor. "You wait here and make sure no one steals that tie."
"Ha ha," Spencer muttered.
She slid out of his father's car and slammed the door shut on him, walking with confidence towards the apartment building and peering at the buzzers to find 'Hotchner'. She found it, third floor, and looked back to the car before pressing it, unease building.
Spencer was watching. She covered up her hesitation by adjusting her skirt, untucking and re-tucking in the tight tank-top she'd worn underneath the lost jacket.
"Maybe we should just go back to the car," Sergio said, becoming a vivid black and blue gecko and scuttling up to rest beside the buzzer, tongue flicking. "He might get shitty with us, and then we'll spend our last weekend before junior year getting bitched at."
"He's going to make us late and then we'll miss out on all the good shit," Emily said. She pressed the buzzer: bzzzt. Silence.
A male voice growled, "What?"
"Hi, it's Emily Prentiss. I'm here to see Aaron." More silence. Finally, there was a grunt and the gate clicked open, letting her in. "Come on," she said, holding out her arm for her sticky dæmon until he grabbed onto a bracelet and hung like a really chunky accessory. "Let's go meet the monster."
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173.
Emily took an automatic step back as the door to the Hotchner apartment yanked open, revealing Aaron's dad. The monster, as it turned out, was a man that looked vaguely like Aaron if Aaron had been dysfunctional for the past thirty years. Bloodshot eyes and visibly broken capillaries in his nose immediately screamed alcoholic, even if the stink of booze hadn't done that already. Emily smiled brightly at him, the smile her mother had taught her despite every sense she had telling her to get the fuck out of there as his gaze slowly skimmed down her body and froze on her tits.
"You Aaron's girl?"
"Sure," she replied. "Is he ready?"
In response, the man grunted again and vanished from the doorway, letting her in. Apprehensively, she stepped through into a darkened hallway that smelled of being closed in without enough air, masculine body odour clinging but without any hint of cleanliness.
The door clicked shut behind her, softly and with finality. Sergio trembled on her shoulder. The man stopped up the hall, and she looked down at the albatross-dæmon standing by him and felt her blood run cold. It was staring at her. Straight at her, and she'd never seen anything colder than those empty eyes. If she hadn't known it was a dæmon, she would have feared it for being wild.
Actually, she reassessed as she stepped forward bravely and squared her shoulders, even knowing it was a dæmon didn't stop her fearing it. That was the kind of dæmon that was used to being feared. She refused to show it that it worked, even on her.
"Where's Aaron?" she asked louder, her voice ringing in this strange, swallowed place. It felt like she'd stepped into the mouth of something, some great creature. Or a storm.
The man just studied her. Goosebumps rose on her arms.
What if Aaron was hurt? What if this guy had beat him again or, worse, killed him? What if he was lying somewhere in this horrible apartment, the dark pressing down around him and bleeding, trying to call out for her—
She needed to stop watching horror movies with Spencer.
"Aaron," the man called suddenly, turning and thumping up the hall. "Your girl is here."
He said girl like other men would say slut, and she wondered why he even bothered with the pretence of being polite. There was nothing polite about his eyes, or the way he stopped and gestured her through without making enough room for her to actually get past without brushing against his front.
A door popped open and Aaron tumbled out, towel around his waist and hair hanging in wet clumps over his face.
"Emily?" he asked, staring at her. "Sorry, I'm late. Sorry—" He paused, his eyes darting from Emily's face to his dad's and his expression visibly darkening. "Come on. My room is up here."
"Door open," his dad said as Emily ran for the room.
"Fuck off," replied Aaron shortly, slamming the door shut as soon as Emily was in. She gaped.
"Are you nuts?" she demanded. "He'll kick your ass."
"He'd regret it if he did," Hal said from her spot on the bed, curled up as a possum. Emily looked at her, and then looked around. The bedroom looked exactly how she'd imagine Aaron's bedroom to look; that was, nothing at all like the rest of the apartment she'd seen. It was painfully neat, incredibly sparse, and smelled nice. Like clean boy and deodorant, not musk and beer. In here, she could relax.
"Uh, do you mind?" Aaron's voice was nervous, and she looked at him and popped an eyebrow before realising he had one hand on the towel and the other gesturing to the neat stack of clothes by his empty desk. "Just, turn around, maybe?"
"Oh, I'll—" She went to leave, but he grabbed her arm.
"Stay in here," he said. On the bed, Hal became a wolf, rising. He didn't seem mad she was here, but his newfound confidence about his dad's meekness apparently didn't extend to leaving him alone with his friends. "Just, turn around, you pervert."
"Fine." She took a seat on his bed, covering her eyes carefully, so she could peek, if she was inclined. Which she wasn't. Well, maybe a little. "What took you so long anyway? We were waiting ages."
"Work," he replied. She heard the towel drop and resisted the urge for all of two seconds before shifting her fingers, just a smidge. No wonder Spencer was into him — dude had a great ass and, apparently, no idea that you could totally get dressed while still under a towel, a trick she'd mastered. "Why'd you come up here?"
She decided to tell the truth as he tugged on his briefs and cut short her show by bending to shuffle into jeans, bringing the marks on his back into view. "We were worried."
Since she'd covered her eyes once more, she heard rather than saw him pause. "Thanks," he said. She heard a zip go and dropped her hands, finding him shirtless but mostly covered and watching her intently. "For worrying about me, I mean. That's nice. Where'd you leave Spence?"
"In the car with a water bowl and the window down," she told him, reaching for the hair-spray on his dresser and seeing him wince. "Now, come here and let's make you handsome."
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174.
She managed to keep the memory of her undeniably mortifying love declaration to Harper out of her mind, right up until she was eight drinks and two shots in and she realised the boys had vanished, leaving her alone with her catastrophic brain and three seniors setting up a keg stand.
"Did I fuck up?" she asked Sergio after, wiping beer from her tank top and walking away from the boys she'd just successfully outdrank. "I shouldn't have told him …"
"You're stewing," Sergio told her. "Stop stewing, have fun. Find the idiots — they've probably fallen in the pool. Or Aaron's rearranging the kitchen while Spencer alphabetises the bookcase."
"Maybe I should tell them how much of a fuck up I am," she said glumly, shoving her way through the crowd to try and find said idiots. She headed outside to see if she could spot them, revelling in the brisk touch of the damp air. Drunk enough, was her next thought. Time to be sensible.
"Prentiss!" someone shouted. When she turned, that someone grabbed her and shoved her against the railing of the porch, sending someone's beer bottle toppling down to shatter on the pavers below. People hollered, already losing interest in their scuffle even as she spun and went to slam her knee up into the crotch of the man breathing stinking air all over her. Sergio went for the guy's dæmon as a spitting, ferociously spotted cat.
"Alec," she snarled, recognising him. "Get the fuck off of me, I swear to god." Behind her back, she fumbled for her chain bracelet and wrapped it tight over her fingers just in case.
"Why?" he said. "Oh, sorry, you think I want to fuck you? You stupid bitch, you had your chance — but, man, I didn't even think someone like you would stoop to hanging with fags."
She was already readying to smack him when she registered what he'd said: "What?"
Leering, his reply stopped what was left of her shitty heart. "You heard me. Those queers you hang out with, Aaron Psycho Hotchner and the twink — they're getting what's coming to them, right now. I mean, I assume they fuck you as well as each — hey!"
She was gone, shoving past him and hurtling into the house.
Those idiots.
"This way," she heard Sergio cry but as soon as he leapt to the ground, he was almost swallowed by the people around them, his voice eaten by the thump of the music. She yelled for him, turning in place. Something deep and frightening kicked in her chest when she couldn't spot him. He leapt up and out of the crowd, wings sending people ducking out of his way. An owl with a wingspan as wide as her arms, he woo'ed loudly and whirled into the air. She followed him, and she found them, barely able to shove her way through the people crowding around to see Aaron getting piled on by, what — three guys? Four? She couldn't tell.
An elbow to her mouth left her dizzy; she was turned around in the press of bodies with no idea what way she was going, finally dropping to her knees and crawling only to come out on the wrong side of the crowd. Sergio dropped down by her side. Even over the music, they could hear Hal roaring.
"They're not hurting them yet," Sergio said. "But they're going to. What do we do?"
Emily thought about it. There were too many people, too many of them drunk and stupid and wild with the crowd. No talking their way out of this, and she didn't fancy Aaron's chances in a brawl, especially not with Spencer there to worry about.
"Hey," she yelled, grabbing a guy's arm as he moved to get away from the crowd, which was now chanting — fight fight fight— and each chorus was another punch to the gut. "Got a light?"
"Oh well," Sergio said as he followed her outside with a bottle of eighty proof he'd snatched from someone's hand clinking in his talons. "At least it's not a church."
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175.
"Are you sure no one saw you?" Aaron fretted from where he was pacing next to the car. Perched within with her legs crossed and hanging out of the open passenger door, Emily rolled her eyes at him. "Absolutely no one?"
"No one saw me." She leaned back to look at Spencer, who was being woeful curled up in the backseat with Aureilo sitting on the side of his head.
"I can't believe you set their greenhouse on fire." Aaron was still fretting, Hal pacing with him.
"I can't believe you guys got busted fucking in a closet," she retorted. "Seriously, what the fuck?"
"We weren't fucking," Spencer mumbled into the upholstery, startling her with his rare cursing. He was more than a bit drunk, although she suspected the shock of almost getting their teeth kicked in had sobered him up. They were all drunk. Honestly, Aaron seemed sober, but he had to be drunk to think making out with his boyfriend at a party was a good idea.
"We were just kissing," Aaron said, obviously lying since he couldn't even look straight at her.
"Kissing with your hand down his pants." Hal, without any kind of qualm, completely dumped them in it. "I told you it was dumb. But, no you couldn't just, I don't know, touch his face or something, you had to go for the dick. Was it worth it, Aaron? Tell me it was worth it."
"Rate the dick," Emily teased. "Worth getting jumped for?"
"Can we please stop talking about my dick?" Spencer groaned, curling up smaller.
Emily reached around to pat his arm. "Honey, we'll stop talking about your dick when you stop getting it out at parties."
His only reply was more groaning.
"At least we were out of town." Aaron opened Spencer's door and sat down heavily, staring off into the trees on the side of the road. "I mean, at least no one we knew was there."
Emily thought of Alec.
"About that," she said slowly, seeing them both tense. "Shit, what does it matter? We've dealt with people thinking you're a murderer before, Aaron. And Spence — no one ever pays attention to you anyway, why would this change anything?"
"Do you know what people do to gays?" Aaron moaned, chalk white with Hal turning into a cat and curling up tight into his lap. "We're dead. We're so fucking dead."
Spencer looked uneasy. "Is that true?" he asked Emily, a mark on his cheek from where the seat had pressed his glasses tight against his face. "Are we screwed?"
"No," she said firmly. "Come on, guys. We're always together and we know they could be out for us, we just don't get cornered."
"You sleep in the dorms," Aaron pointed out.
His gaze flickered up to her shortened hair.
"Well, yeah, but there's no one at home to make sure that I'm actually doing that. I'll just sneak there or stay with Spencer. We don't even know if there's going to be a problem yet and, if there is, we'll just protect each other. Come on, who gives a shit what people think about us? We're other anyway, and proud of it. They can't touch us."
Spencer nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, we'll be fine. Right, Aaron?"
"Sure," said Aaron, but he didn't seem convinced.
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176.
Despite Emily's surety that they could protect each other, it turned out that she was wrong. Two weeks after he was caught with Aaron, Spencer didn't come home from school.