Thanks for all the reviews. You all are the best! (And you truly deserve that exclamation point.)
Emily always knew it was going to be a risk to introduce Christian to her mother. Sure Strauss had liked him, but that was largely because she had a little crush on him. Reid had pointed out that her pupils slightly dilated when she saw Christian, the body's way of signaling sexual attraction. And in many ways that was expected, because even though Emily would never admit it to him, Christian was very attractive. However, Elizabeth Prentiss was not so indiscriminate when it came to her only child's romantic partners, even more so now that there was a child involved. Considering his personality, Emily thought that, perhaps, this sort of reaction should have been expected.
Christian wasn't exactly the easiest person to figure out. He was often brash, abrasive, brutally honest, and somehow oddly charming. He could be exceptionally cruel and cold, but also had the ability to be tactful and considerate, even gentle. He used terms like 'wicked' and 'fuck,' which coupled with the Boston accent may have given him the appearance of being unintelligent or ignorant. But he wasn't. He could discuss the themes and nuances of Faulkner, Joyce, and Keats as well as he could talk about any Red Sox games. He was smart, he had depth, but he liked to disguise his intelligence. He liked the advantage it gave him.
And then there was his history with women. The fact of the matter was that for most of his life he had slept around, not looking for any sense of commitment. However, on his own terms, when he was ready, he was able to remain faithful to her even when they were separated for months at a time. Additionally, he didn't act like monogamy was some huge sacrifice or even feel the need to discuss it with her, it was just what he had expected of himself.
Christian Cavanagh was just about the most complex man Emily had ever met, which is why Emily had never brought a man like him home before. Because, simply put, there was just no one else like him.
Emily and her mother walked silently out of the busy restaurant until they reached the parking lot, waiting for the elder Prentiss' driver. "So what did you think of him?"
Elizabeth corrected her posture before speaking up, "He is not what I would have envisioned for you."
Emily couldn't help but scoff at the statement, "Maybe that's why I love him."
"Emily" the Ambassador warned as the diplomat's obligatory black Mercedes-Benz pulled up, the two brunettes entering it as soon at the driver opened the door. "I did not mean my comment to come off as insulting. I think he's a very pleasant man considering…"
"Considering?"
"There is a lot of history to take into account in regard to his family" Elizabeth filled in cryptically before opting to clarify further as they headed towards where Emily's car was parked. "I do not believe in regrets. I believe regrets are a way for individuals to make excuses for their poor choices in life" she began as Emily couldn't help but roll her eyes at her mother's asinine statement. God forbid if Elizabeth Prentiss ever admitted to having made a mistake. What would the world come to?
The elder Prentiss woman cleared her throat before she spoke again, "I have never been involved with a man like this Christian Cavanagh. That being said, I have also never been in what one could consider a happy relationship."
Emily couldn't help but feel sorry for her mother in that moment. Because her mother was right, she had never had a happy marriage with her father. And Emily didn't know of any other men her mother had been involved with, which meant that they probably didn't make her happy either. "I'm sorry mother."
"I don't have regrets" Elizabeth reminded her. "But you are happy with this man?"
"I am."
"Are you considering marrying him?"
"Yes" Emily answered as she leaned her head against the car window.
And that is when Elizabeth Prentiss said something that surprised even Emily. "You don't need to marry him if you don't want to."
To many outsiders the comment would have seemed cold, cruel, disapproving, but to Emily it meant something else entirely. Elizabeth Prentiss had grown up in another generation. In another world where a young woman met an appropriate monied man who her parents approved of, a man who asked for her hand in marriage with a large expensive engagement ring or family heirloom. After a suitable engagement period, the dignifiedyoung woman would marry her acceptable spouse in a lavish ceremony before having a child with him only after a sufficient amount of time to give the impression that the couple had never had sex before marriage. And that is the world that Elizabeth Prentiss grew up in, and even though society was much different now, it is the world that she still lived in.
Because even though it was the twenty-first century it was still a big deal for the only daughter of a powerful diplomat to have a child out-of-wedlock, with a man that she had no intention of marrying no less. It was looked down upon, considered 'classless' or 'trashy' in some social circles, circles her mother had belonged to for decades. Therefore, to hear that her mother didn't expect her to marry Christian was not a dig by any means, but rather meant that she didn't want to pressure her daughter into anything. For the first time in Emily's life, her mother was putting Emily's happiness above her reputation.
"I know mom" Emily replied after a few brief moment of silence. "I want to marry him" she simply stated before laughing. "He's insane. I'll admit that. God, he's certifiable and ridiculous, and if someone would have told me when I first met him that I would be here now I would think that person needed professional help. I don't even know how to explain it, but he does make me happy."
Elizabeth gave her daughter the smallest of smiles before cutting into the silence that filled that car once again. "I am very happy for you Emily. I always wanted what was best for you."
"I know."
"And I'm thrilled by the prospect of becoming a grandmother, although I am not quite sure if I enjoy the title of 'grandmother.'"
"What you want him to call you Ambassador?" Emily laughed as her mother gave her a warning look. "I think you'll have to make peace with being called grandma."
"I suppose" Elizabeth relented. "I expect you will have a very handsome son. Christian reminds me of a young Robert Redford in Barefoot in the Park, only with a more preferable nose."
Emily shook her head at the description. If he heard about this she'd never hear the end of it, "Please do not tell him that."
Her mother gave her a questioning look before changing the subject, "How is your wedding coming along?"
Emily took a deep breath and chuckled, "To be honest there are no plans yet. I don't know when we'll end up doing it. Everything feels fast and I'm not sure if I'm ready for it right now anyway. We're living together and now there's a baby involved and I don't know if I'm ready to be anyone's wife at the moment…" Emily drifted off, realizing that she practically admitted to her mother that she had gotten pregnant by accident again. However, she was shocked to not see any judgment in her mothers' eyes. Probably because to some degree her mother already knew none of this was planned. But when does life ever go according to plan? "Maybe after the baby comes we'll just go down to the courthouse."
"Nonsense" Elizabeth interjected. "You are my only child and I plan on giving you a proper wedding."
"So I'll have my child present at my wedding? What will all of your friends think of this?" Emily asked with a grin.
"We'll do it after you give birth. We won't register for gifts, merely suggest charitable contributions to a foundation of your choice and I will only invite my most liberal of acquaintances" the Ambassador informed Emily, who just rolled her eyes again, thinking her mother was the most ridiculous person on the planet. "Not to mention the fact that your future husband is very charming. He'll win them over."
"Wait a second here, you thought Christian was charming?" Emily asked with a perplexed look.
"He is rather Kennedy-esque" her mother admitted as a dumbfounded Emily opened the car door.
"Mom I thought you hated him."
"Why would you think something like that? Your pregnancy must be negatively effectively your cognitive skills, which worries me. Perhaps you should take some time off from work considering the lives at stake."
"Thanks" Emily replied as she dumbly waved back to her mother before getting into her own car. "Your daddy gets away with everything just because he's 'conventionally' attractive. He is so not charming" she adamantly said to her unborn child before starting the car to head home.
"I'm home" Emily announced as she walked into the apartment, kicking off her shoes and leaving dropping her purse on a few packed boxes in the living room before walking into the bedroom to hear the shower running from the master bathroom. "You didn't shower before dinner?" Emily yelled as changed out of her dress into one of Christian's faded red Patriots t-shirts and a pair of silk navy blue boxers, approaching the bathroom door.
"I was running late" he defended as Emily walked into the steamy room, washing her face and brushing her teeth.
"Well, I don't know what you slipped into the Ambassador's drink, but she actually called you 'Kennedy-esque.'"
"She sounds like a wicked smart lady" Christian smugly stated as Emily walked back into the bedroom, hearing the shower shut off behind her.
Emily rolled her eyes at his confidence as she turned down the air conditioning again. She hated that her entire body was hot except for her feet, which for some inexplicable reason were always cold.
"I am so glad you're from Boston" Emily remarked to him as he walked out of the bathroom wearing a pair of patterned grey knit boxers and a plain white undershirt.
"Why is that?" He absent-mindedly asked he put his watch on the dresser and plugged his phone in to charge before turning around to face her.
"Because you're always hot."
"Are you finally admitting what an attractive motherfucker I am?" He asked with a cocky smirk.
"I meant temperature idiot."
"Oh you mean my thick blood? It is a gift and a curse, mainly a curse because it was muggie as fuck today" he complained. "I'm thinking about buzzing off the hair. So your mother liked me didn't she? Did I call it or did I fucking call it?"
"Ugh, fine she kind of liked you" she admitted with a groan as she sat down on the bed, lotioning her legs. "I don't get how you do that. You're such an asshole, how does everyone like you?"
Christian laughed at the inquiry. "Well that's not entirely true, some people do hate me. But if someone doesn't like me that's there fucking problem because they're pricks with no taste" He smiled as Emily laughed.
"But you're not out of the woods yet Goldilocks, my mother is still my mother."
"And what is that supposed to mean Blofled?"
"Blofled?"
"The evil genius Bond villain" he filled her in as she started laughing.
"I'm a Bond villain now? What is that supposed to make you? Bond?"
"Fuck yeah" he answered in a confident voice with a smirk.
Emily scoffed as she crossed her arms over her chest, "In this relationship I'm totally Bond. I'm the one with the international spy cred. You can be my Miss Moneypenny."
"WHAT?!" He yelled as she burst into a fit of laughter. "I don't want to be Miss Moneypenny."
"Fine, you can be Pussy Galore" she choked out over a laugh as he scowled at her. "Sorry baby, but you cannot change fate. Anyway you'll find out about what I mean about my mother eventually" Emily replied with an evil grin before her expression became more serious, "Hey, you know what? You never talk about her, your own mother."
Christian scratched his jaw line and sighed, "What is there to talk about?"
"Well what are you going to tell our son about her?"
"I don't know. Why does it matter?"
"It matters" Emily replied back as she bit her bottom lip. "He's going to ask one day. To be honest I'm curious about her myself. I really don't know much about her, about what she was like."
"I already told you like a fucking year ago."
"Christian…why didn't you want to name the baby after her?"
"Because he's a fucking boy" he snapped before massaging his temples, avoiding eye contact with the raven haired woman.
Emily ran her hands through her hair and spoke up in a gentle tone, "We didn't know the gender when I suggested it. I feel like your hiding something from me…"
"Oh you would know all about that wouldn't you?" He theoretically asked in a harsh tone.
"Christian this whole 'we talk about our feelings' goes both ways…"
"Like you did?" He sarcastically asked with an eye roll. "Fuck, quit being such a hypocrite" Christian bitterly accused, his temper getting the better of him. "You are fucking fine with privacy when it's good for you. When it's you're business it's fucking A-okay to keep secrets. Are you forgetting that you broke up with me because you didn't want to talk about shit and now what? Now you're fucking all open with all that pysco-babble bullshit?!"
"Christian…"
Christian shook his head before interrupting her, "The only reason I am even here right now is because you got pregnant. If you hadn't gotten pregnant we both know you would have never fucking called me again. We both know you would have just walked the fuck away because that is what you do. So do not fucking start with me about opening up to you about something that does not involve you" he ranted as he shook his head before preparing to walk off.
"Christian" Emily sighed as she got up off the bed to face him. His reaction to her simple request showed her that there was obviously a deeper issue involved. "What is going on with you? I said I was sorry about everything. I thought we were trying to get past of this. You can't just throw that in my face to get out of talking to me. Why didn't you want to even consider the name?" She asked in a calm voice as she lightly brushed her fingers against his collarbone. "You need to talk to me."
"It's none of your fucking business Emily!" He shot back before taking a deep breath, "You always do this, you pry. You fucking pry into my life like it's your right. I don't owe you a fucking explanation about why I didn't like a name. I don't owe you shit."
"Christian" She uttered again as he clenched his jaw. "We both know that it's not about just not liking a name."
"I just don't like talking about her okay?" He admitted before briefly closing his eyes. "I don't want to remember her. I don't need to…"
"You don't need to?"
"I don't need a mother. I'm an adult. It's irrelevant."
Emily scoffed at his reasoning, replying in a sarcastic tone, "Yeah it's so irrelevant, which is why you're so upset."
Christian crossed his arms as he leaned against the dresser, gazing down at the floor. "Can we not do this now?"
"No" she firmly replied before going on, "It's simple, if we don't this now we won't do it. I need you to talk to me. If you're mad at me I need you to tell me why so I can try to fix it, but you cannot out-Prentiss me."
He nodded as he lightly brushed his thumbs against her baby bump. "I'm not mad at you. I'm sorry…"
"Don't apologize, just be honest with me" she gently ordered with a small smile, nodding for him to go on.
A few minutes of silence passed before he finally spoke up, "It's like all of my memories morph together with that one and I don't know how to separate them."
"What do you mean?"
"You're the fucking profiler, you tell me" he coldly requested as Emily shook her head 'no.'
"I want you to tell me."
Christian bit his bottom lip and nervously scanned the quiet bedroom, "I was there. I was there when she fell" he confessed in a quiet voice as the words hung in the air. He didn't have to clarify what he meant by the statement, Emily already knew. He was present when his mother died. "I just don't want to think about that" he stated in a voice that was barely above a whisper as Emily merely nodded. "Maybe someday I'd be fine with using that name, but right now everything is too fresh."
Emily slightly tilted her head in confusion, "What do you mean?"
He lightly swallowed before deciding to answer her, "It's just been fucking hard lately. I had never felt so fucking powerless like that in my entire life until…I really thought Ray was going to kill me and I just didn't care. It wasn't like I was looking forward to it, but I figured that maybe it was my penance. I don't know, but the idea of him touching you, hurting you made me sick and I couldn't do anything about it. I don't know, I guess all of those memories started mixing together" he shrugged. "I don't need anymore reasons to remember any of that, including a daughter named after my mother."
Emily picked up on him using the term 'mother.' It was always something he always did, evidently attempting to distance himself from the woman. Just a few months prior Emily could see the parallels between her and Juliet Markham, and apparently Christian saw them too. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"Don't take this the wrong way, because I really do love you, but you're kind of a fucking mess" he told her in a matter of fact tone that would have ordinarily made her burst into a fit of laughter. But this time was different. This conversation was heavier, deeper, probably the deepest one they had ever had. It gave Emily further insight into who Christian Cavanagh truly was, why he was who he was. "I don't mean to be a dick, but you kind of are and I didn't want to dump that shit on you. You're pregnant and it's not good for you to be all stressed out with my fucking issues."
Emily sighed as she put her hands on his chest, "You still should have told me."
"It's just, fuck" he began as he roughly rubbed his reddened eyes. "You're like the only thing I care about. I could give a shit about anything or anyone else and that's fucking terrifying for me. Do you get how fucking impossible that is for me? You just, you can't ever not be okay."
"Okay" Emily agreed with a nod, realizing that the death of his mother probably left Christian with severe abandonment issues, which is probably why he compulsively pushed people away with his rough around the edges persona.
Christian shook his head as he ran his hands through his hair, "It's fucked up to want that from you. It's fucking impossible to guarantee, but I don't have anyone else. You're the only one. I just, you have to always be…"
"I'm not going to leave you." She firmly stated as she gently ran her hands through his hair. "I'm okay" she repeated before tenderly pressing her lips to his. "I'm fine" she told him again before pulling him into a deeper kiss, slipping her tongue into his mouth as his hands found their way to her lower back, pulling her closer. The couple briefly broke apart as Emily whispered into his ear, "You don't have to worry about me."
Christian simply nodded as Emily brought her hands under his shirt, pulling the offending item off him and running her hands over the muscles and small scars while he teasingly ran his hands up and down her sides.
But this time wasn't about hormones or mere physical desire, it was about showing him that she was okay.
Christian cupped her cheeks, bring her into another kiss as she ran her tongue along the roof of his mouth, prompting his body to shudder before she slightly moved away, taking complete control as she kissed down his body. His breath hitched as she nipped the skin under his ear, soothing the area with her tongue, her hot breath dancing across the wet skin as he reached towards her chest.
"No touching" she ordered with a grin, pining his hands between his body and the dresser.
I probably won't be able to update tomorrow so should we continue this with a double update day...