TITLE: Snuff: Listen To Your Shame (PART 02/03)
RATING: FRM
CHARACTER: E. Prentiss / J. Jareau / A. Hotchner
SUMMARY: She knows how much these cases get to me...
WARNINGS: SPOILERS for 4. 15 - Demonology and 5.13 - Risky Business. Femslash, sexual content, mentions of self-harm.
NOTES: I swear I didn't intend to cheapen this story with a love triangle, but you know...shit happens. *shrug*

I find myself dancing at his threshold, anxious about being caught by Morgan or Reid, and wondering what I'm even doing here. But something inside me already knows. I put my fist up to knock, bring it down, put it back up, tentatively. And then the door opens. He stands still for a moment, not entirely surprised to see me here, penetrating me with eyes the color of damp wood and I have to bite my bottom lip to keep from crying. He holds the ice bucket in his hands and I take it from him as I slip past him to push my way inside.

"The ice machine's broken," I call over my shoulder as I toss the bucket on the bed and turn to face him, trying for casual as I plunk down on the mattress.

He closes the door and looks at me; he can see the desperation in my eyes, I know it. Hotch crosses the room to stand before me; he puts his hand to my face and tells me that my eyes are so dark he can see himself in them.

It's the same dialogue he used last time, and the time before that. He knows that formalities go out the window the second I come to him at midnight with the weight of the world on my shoulders and JJ's scent still lingering on my collarbone. He knows he's just being used. Aaron Hotchner is the only thing that can confirm what I've already known for years, and when I don't want to think or feel or acknowledge anything but rage, he's happy to let me take it out on him. His scars are the same as mine, jagged and unspoken. We leave hesitant fingerprints on one another where we've been permanently wounded, but it's a faint comfort.

Thirty minutes later, I'm putting my clothes back on and I can feel his eyes on my back when I start to leave.

"Emily," he says just as my palm touches the doorknob, "you couldn't possibly love anyone enough to hate them."

I can tell by the tone of his voice that he's challenging me to face him.

"Wanna bet?" I speak to the door, not to him, and then I make my exit without so much as a backwards glance.

It's silent on the flight back; we're a family divided. The three of us torn apart by lust or anger and as the rest of the team sleeps, we paint our smiles if our wandering eyes cross paths, and then quickly return to our stacks of paperwork or, in JJ's case, counting the clouds as they whisper alongside us like quiet waves.

Two days later there's another case in Altus, Oklahoma. This time five pregnant teens went missing. That's always going to be an unspoken stipulation, the one that's written in blood and has been the bane of my existence since I was 15. We find abused children in captivity, housewives with their throats slit, mangled body parts forgotten in some ditch on the side of the road, and I don't even blink. Then a pregnant teen goes missing. We find her body three days later with her baby crudely ripped from her womb and then thrown over the side of a bridge in a Hefty bag, and I can't make it home fast enough. I spend the night battling nausea and mostly losing, and JJ's still there to rub my back and bring me wet cloths for my forehead.

"Em, why won't you talk to me?" she whispers sweetly in my ear as I lift my head out of the toilet bowl and rock back onto my heels.

She gently brushes away the sweat-dampened hair that's plastered itself to my face and I try not to look at her. I know her eyes will capture me, get me lost, the blue in them surrounding me like oxygen. I won't be able to lie to those open vessels and tell her that I'm okay, it's just a stomach bug, I'll be fine, really. So I stare into my lap instead, my fingers curling around the porcelain bowl like some kind of sick lifeline.

"It's nothing," I mumble weakly and then I force myself to my feet and leave the bathroom with a light head and an empty heart.

I hear her following close behind and I can feel those sharp irises in my back, demanding answers. I collapse into bed, glancing at the clock on the bedside table. 4:30 AM. Have I really been puking for the past two hours? The jet landed at 1, and I didn't even make it home until after 2. I spent most of the flight in the narrow airplane restroom, fending off quiet knocks at the door - first JJ, then Morgan, then Rossi. All wanting to know if I'm okay, all asking if I need anything. I denied them all. I told JJ once we landed that I needed some time alone, but she insisted on staying with me. She knows how much these sort of cases get to me; knows that someone's got to be there to pull my hair back and bring me cups of crushed ice so I won't dehydrate. We caught the unsub, but it was a small victory muted out by the emotional breakdown which I knew was inevitable. Still, she expects this and she'll get me through it every time.

I shut my eyes as she slips into bed beside me and I feel her small hand tuck a lock of my hair behind my ear before it closes around my hipbone like she's afraid I'm going to slip away. Maybe it would be better if I did.

"You can't keep this up forever," she says firmly, "eventually you're going to have to talk to me-"

"Not now, JJ, please..." I cut in with a tired voice, keeping my eyes sealed.

"No, not now. But promise me that you will, soon. I can't stand seeing you like this."

I don't respond, I know better than to make empty promises. I turn over so my back is to her and I won't have to feel those ice-blue orbs slicing away my flesh until they reach the marrow of my bones.

TO BE CONTINUED...