Here's a dialogue prompt for Emily please! Try this out pls. Love you Kam sm sm. "So why are you here?" "To make a fool of myself." ok ty lysm
even though i watched u type this, the wording makes me giggle every time i look at it.
emily prentiss x tech analyst!reader <3
warnings: fem!reader, cannon typical violence, very brief allusions to sexual assault (nothing happens!), angst and fluff! mutual pining.
word count: 5.4k
Emily is the loveliest thing you've ever seen and you can't imagine how she could ever possibly like you back. She enjoys the game, though, and teasing you is her favorite hobby.
-
It’s a sunny day. Warmth trickles down with the scattered light through the leaves. Patterns trace your arms, throwing your skin into a collage of different shapes and shades. Leaning back on your elbows, you watch people mill about the park. You look back down at your arm after a few more minutes, this time focused on the small watch resting there. With a sigh, you stand up and dust off your pants before picking up the small blanket you laid out and tucking it into your bag.
You walk back to work, enjoying the sounds of the people around you. You lingered too long at the park during your break and are hoping that nobody notices your slightly late return. Maybe the team will be in a meeting, gruesome pictures you never quite learned to stomach plastered on the board, entirely oblivious to your tardiness.
Unlikely, but a welcome thought soothing your anxiety as you push the door open and scan your badge at the security desk.
“Welcome back,” the security guard says, smiling at you over his paperback. He’s an old greying man and you vaguely recognize him. You think he’s new and send him a warm smile in return.
“Thanks,” you glance at his name badge, “Martin!”
You walk past him and step into the elevator. “Wait!” A voice calls and you reach forward to hit the hold button instinctively before you register the voice as Emily’s.
She jogs into the elevator with you, smiling gratefully. “Thanks, I’m already running a little behind.” She lifts a container and shakes it a little. The label is from the Italian bistro across the street, about a ten-minute walk away and always nearly triple that in wait time.
“Brave of you to go there during your lunch,” you joke, returning her smile and pressing the button for your floor.
You hope she can’t see how your hands shake as you reach forward.
“I know, I just love their Pasta Brado. Have you tried it?”
“Can’t say I have. I’m boring, I usually go for the parm.”
“You’re not boring,” she says so earnestly that you can’t help but blush. You cough as an excuse to raise your hand to your face and hopefully hide it some. “You do have to try it, though. Here,” she offers you the plastic box.
“Oh, I couldn’t. And I already ate.” You ignore the way your chest hurts a little at how enthusiastic she is. The worst part? She doesn’t even know how endearing her simple kindness, her casual enthusiasm, is to you.
“Tomorrow, then. We can go together.” The elevator doors open as she says it and she steps out with an affirmative nod to solidify it. “Don’t try to bail out on me either, I know where to find you.”
“Yeah, I'm okay,” you say, feeling lame as you step out behind her. “I would love to.” She’s too far to hear you, though, already heading to Spencer’s desk and jumping right into his conversation with Morgan.
Someone says your last name and you turn on your heel to see Hotch and cringe slightly. “I was trying to find you.” It’s a kinder way of him reminding you that you’re nearly ten minutes late back from your lunch.
“Sorry, sir.”
“It’s fine. Do you have the reports finished from last week's trip to Huston?”
“Yes, sir, they’re at my desk. One moment.”
-
You and Emily don’t go to the bistro the next day because she and the team are sent to a small town in Kansas that night.
“I’ll owe you lunch,” she says, hand on the back of your desk chair and brushing your shoulder as the team rushes to the jet.
“Don’t worry about it!” You reassure her.
“I’m taking you to lunch,” she calls over her shoulder, pretend-glaring, “you will try that Brado!”
And then she’s gone, leaving you giddy and breathless.
You know she’s just being friendly – she treats Spencer, Morgan, and JJ all the same as you – but her efforts to spend one-on-one time with you outside of work still have you feeling like a schoolgirl passed a note from her crush in class.
You try to remind your heart to stop singing because Emily probably isn’t even gay and definitely isn’t interested. Instead, Garcia scares the shit out of you when she interrupts your inner monologue.
“Lunch with Emily? Things are getting serious in your work marriage.” You hadn’t seen her walk into the room and jump at her voice, hand jumping to your mouth to suppress a yelp. “Sorry! Sorry!”
“It’s okay, didn’t see you.”
“Your loss, I look fantastic today.”
“As always,” you smile up at her, nose wrinkling and genuine fondness filling your senses.
“Careful, wouldn’t want a workplace affair,” she jokes, leaning against your desk and picking up the stress ball you keep handy.
“Stop,” you moan in good nature. “Nobody else calls us work wives.”
“That’s just because they don’t have my brilliance and excellent observational skills.”
“Nor do they have the same privy to my more personal thoughts,” you say, glancing up at her before returning to your paperwork. With the team leaving so quickly to tend to a missing child's case, you’re not getting home in time to cook dinner but are hoping to leave early enough to grab food instead of resorting to your freezer stash.
“I would hope not. You know I can’t be replaced, baby.”
“Does Morgan know you talk to all your work besties like this?”
“I most certainly do not. You’re a regular bestie, not a work bestie.” A wink and then her expression sobers. “I do have an actual reason for visiting your humble cubical, though.”
“Hm?”
“I’m going to need extra hands for this case. It’s time-sensitive, as usual, and seems like it will be particularly tricky.”
“Yes ma’am,” you say, dropping your pen and standing to follow her.
Your position at the bureau is kind of a catch-all. Most of your time is spent logging data, building reports, and doing general research for the team. Occasionally, though, you jump in to help Garcia with real-time research. Nothing as high-stakes as her direct assignments, more background work. Calling offices to talk to managers, combing through more meticulous data, generic census material to rule out obvious dead ends.
It’s stressful work that technically isn’t what you’re paid for but you never complain. Your team saves lives, consistently putting themselves in the line of danger. If you have to spend a few hours a month helping Garcia call a suspect's manager at McDonald's to see if he still works there, it’s literally the least you can do.
“Yes, so, it looks like our unsub…”
You drown out Garcia’s brief about information you already have sitting in front of you and begin vetting possible suspects from the large pool her system created.
It’s going to be a long night. You think about future Brado to cheer you up.
-
“Reid, Prentiss take the back,” Hotch’s voice fills your ears. You imagine the pair nodding and splitting off from the group.
This is your least favorite part of helping the team with active investigations – listening in on the calls. It’s rare that you and Garcia join the line when they’re approaching the unsub but, with you helping her, it isn’t a risk to distract Garcia and a much quicker method of getting any new information the team needs. It’s a new system you’ve only tried thrice, unsure how having microphones on 24/7 will work, and it grants you and the team more fluid communication.
Still, adrenaline floods your veins as you listen to their coms, the sounds of Garcia typing a constant behind their voices, imagining every way this could go wrong.
You suspect the girl is still alive, the uncle doesn’t seem to have any reason to kill her just yet, but your fear for her grows with every minute.
“Clear!”
Your eyes fall to the receipts flooding your screen. Ammo. A new rifle and pistol. The team knows but the evidence of this unsubs ability to hurt any of your friends, your family, isn’t helping your nerves.
“I think he’s going to the roof!” Morgan’s voice, clear in the comms.
You click out of the documents. Two swift motions on the screen. The firm press of the button.
“Morgan, you’re on foot. Prentiss, follow him. Everyone else in vans, go!”
“Garcia, map out possible escape routes from the roof,” you instruct.
She nods, screens shifting immediately. She puts on her own headset with one hand and clicks on the call and starts to bark information to Hotch.
“Got her!” Reid’s voice sounds and you deflate a little. He mutes as he begins to console the small girl.
You know you can take off your headset now, leave the call, and go to your paperwork. There isn’t much more you can do to help – you’re sure that’s what you’re supposed to do – but you stay on anyway, listening.
“Right on Elmore!” Morgan calls. You find the street on Garcia’s screen, eyes tracing the path you think they’re taking.
“We’ll try to cut him off,” Rossi says and you can hear tires in the background of the call. The click of a steering wheel cutting to the side too quickly. Someone’s labored breathing – probably Morgan’s as he dead sprints.
“Stop! Put your hands up!” Emily shouts. The firmness in her voice makes you sit up straighter in your chair.
You hear something that sounds vaguely like, “bitch,” before a loud pop drowns anything else out.
“Emily!” Morgan’s voice, more pops.
Gunfire. That’s gunfire, your brain recognizes.
Your blood has gone cold.
“We need a medic!” Morgan shouts. Hotch’s line blinks red, going dead as he calls the ambulance. “Emily, Emily.”
Rustling. Cars. Sirens. Morgan’s line goes dead after you hear a car door slam shut. Then Reid’s and Rossi’s. Emily’s is the last to stay green, blinking.
You and Garcia stare at each other as you listen to Emily be loaded into an ambulance. Listen to Morgan tell the team, voice far away and barely tangible, that the unsub only managed to fire out one shot before he downed him.
Neither of you can hear where she was shot or how badly injured she is before Emily’s line goes red as well.
-
“Emily?” You call softly, rapping your knuckles softly on the frame of the cracked hospital door.
Your name, faint, answers you and you take that as permission to nudge the door open. The room looked dark from the hallway but Emily has the small lamp embedded on the wall switched on, throwing her face into harsh shadow.
“Hey, you,” you say, walking in, arms full. “I brought things.”
“You didn’t have to do that,” she says, trying to sit herself up further and wincing as the motion pulls on her stitches in her abdomen.
“Wait, let me help you,” you say, setting your things down and reaching out a hand.
You wait for her nod before touching her, letting her grasp your arm and looping your other arm around the back of her waist to take most of her weight yourself.
“Thanks,” she mumbles. You can tell she hates feeling useless, hates needing help for something as simple as sitting up, so you drop the subject with a nod and kind smile.
You turn around to the small rolling tray where you put your things down, pulling two black containers out from a plastic bag. You feel silly and very awkward as you turn around to show them to her.
“I know it’s probably not quite what you meant but,” you set the containers down on her bed and pop one open.
“The Pasta Brado! Oh man, I was going to treat you.” She’s pouting through a smile, attempting to put on an upset facade and failing miserably.
It’s so cute that you struggle with what to say next.
“Thank you, really. You can pull up that chair, if you’re hungry now.”
You grab the chair she’s motioned to and drag it to sit next to her. “I’m hungry if you are. It might be a little cold, though, it’s kind of a far walk.”
“You walked here?” Emily asks, tone appalled and face comically shocked.
“Yeah, my car broke down last week. I’ve been walking to work – it’s actually really nice out right now – and I couldn’t find a cab from the bistro.” You busy yourself with the food while you talk, opening the second container, setting it on her legs, and unwrapping the plastic cutlery for her.
“Jesus! You didn’t need to come and see me if you don’t have a car. You didn’t need to come at all, actually. I really appreciate it,” she amends, seeing how your bashful smile freezes on your face, reaching forward as if to touch your face and brushing your shoulder instead. “It’s really sweet of you but you didn’t need to walk all that way. Isn’t it like a twenty-minute walk from here?”
Over thirty, but you nod anyway, knowing it won’t help your case to correct her. “It’s not a big deal. You were shot in the stomach, of course I wanted to see you.”
“Ah, so you wouldn't want to see me otherwise,” she teases, nodding and pushing her pasta around with her fork. She doesn’t even try to conceal her grin.
“Ha ha, very funny,” you mumble. You take a bite of your food and your eyes widen. “Oh my god.”
“I knew you would love it,” she beams, watching your expression as you taste the food. You you she meant to say it in a gloating way but you swear you can hear a sort of fondness behind the words. Something in you warms at her ability to know you so well.
You tell yourself you’re overreacting about both thoughts.
“You were right – Emily this is unfairly good.”
“Oh, I know,” she says, taking her own bite and letting out an exaggerated moan, complete with an eye roll. You giggle and she smiles at you. “Thank you, this is exactly what I needed.”
“You’re welcome,” you say, holding her eye contact.
She's been in the hospital for three days, transferred back to Virginia last night; her hair is unwashed and unbrushed, and she’s wearing no makeup and a hospital gown.
She’s still the prettiest girl you’ve ever seen.
-
Your car is fixed by the time Emily is released from the hospital two days later and you offer to take her home.
“Hi Sergio,” you greet the cat brushing against your legs as Emily disengages the alarm.
You set her things down by the door before turning to offer her your arm. Emily doesn’t pretend that she doesn’t need the help when it’s just you two, something you’re grateful for after watching her struggle with the team around, and lets you guide her to her bedroom.
You set about making her comfortable, turning down her sheets and propping the pillows up so she can sit.
“I’ve got it,” she laughs, playfully pushing away your hands.
You laugh along with her, raising your hands and backing away. “I’m going to go put the rest of your stuff away and get you a drink.”
“Perfect, I’ll take an old-fashioned. Don’t forget the cherry.”
You roll your eyes at her, scoffing and leaving her room.
You throw her clothes and go-bag in her laundry room before making her a glass of water and another glass of juice. Once you’re sure she’s settled in her bed with her book, you return to the kitchen to make her a few dinners, ignoring her protests.
-
Emily is back in the field much sooner than you would have liked.
“I was cleared by the doctors,” she tells you, coat slung over her arm as she digs through her bag for her badge.
You smile at Martin, sending him a mock exasperated look, before she finds her ID and shows it to him.
“It still seems too soon, Em,” you persist, reaching forward to push the elevator button and turning so you can lean back to watch her face.
“Em?” Emily asks, the hint of a smile pulling up the left corner of her mouth.
You sort of feel like you could die in that moment, just from the heat that simple gesture surges through you.
“It just sort of slipped out, sorry,” you say, thoroughly embarrassed.
The elevator dings and the doors open, throwing you off balance for a second. This doesn’t help your already flared nerves as you stumble back and drop your bag. You reach down to gather it and the files scattered across the floor.
You’re kneeling to stuff everything in your bag when Emily crosses your line of sight again, wide smile on her face – teeth fully on display and nose scrunched, you are in desperate need of help – holding out your notepad.
“I think the nickname’s sweet. I kind of like the idea of having a name only one person, only you, calls me.”
All of the air has left this godforsaken elevator, the heat must be on, you stare dumbly at her as she reaches forward to grab your bag and put the rest of your papers inside of it for you.
And then, realizing you look like an absolute idiot, you snap back into your body and cough slightly. The doors ding and open again, you grab your bag from her and stand slowly. Smiling at her, still crouched on the floor and looking, amused, up at you through her eyelashes, you say, “Okay. Thanks, then, Emmy.”
You walk away after that brief flash of confidence, telling yourself you’re just imagining how you swear her face flushed bright at your comment.
And if Morgan mentions a few minutes that Emily seems flusters, well, who can blame you for floating on that high for a few days?
Except she doesn’t let it go.
She corners you on your break in the kitchenette. Literally. She catches you when you’re examining the coffee pot that has been making concerning gurgles for the past few days and leans on the counter behind you, effectively blocking your exit.
Not that you really want to leave.
She’s wearing a red tank top and dark jeans, her hair is loose around her shoulders, eyes steadily trained on your face as you work.
“Hello,” you say, quiet in a way you’re not normally.
“Hi.”
“What’re you doing?” You ask after a few more moments of her silently staring at you while you pretend to know what you’re doing with a screwdriver.
“Enjoying the view.”
You drop your screwdriver and relish in the sound of her laugh.
-
You’d love to say that you had some suave answer to return her charm but you think you spent it all that morning with your boldness.
You’re not shy but confidence doesn’t run in your blood either. You’d say you’re pretty normal – average. You don’t find much wrong with that, you know you have other qualities that build you up into an interesting person. You love your friends and coworkers deeply, for one. And have an intense trust in them and their abilities.
That trust is always tested in your day-to-day at work but never more than now as you feel the car around you make turns at highway speeds. You think you’re on some sort of back road but it’s hard to tell from the trunk given the obvious lack of windows.
You’re calmer than you thought you would be if kidnapped.
Groaning after one particularly rough turn that has you jostling against the sides of the trunk, you allow your head to thump back and stare at the inside of the dark car. Light breaks through the cracks of the hinges of the trunk and you wonder if water trickles through when it rains.
You’ve been in here too long to consider if you’re focused on the wrong things. You’re scared shitless, of course, but the adrenaline faded about an hour into your drive and now you’re just bored.
Imagine that – bored as fuck in the trunk of a stranger's car, wrists burning from the rope and jaw sore from where it’s been forced open too long by the fabric tied around the back of your head.
You’re just allowing yourself to reimagine your morning with Emily when the car stops and the engine cuts.
You snap back into the present, energy flooding your system again as your brain flicks into overdrive. You might spend your days paper-pushing behind a desk, but you passed your physical. You’re smart, you’ve heard the stories of how these victims survive captivity.
When the trunk pops open, you squeeze your eyes shut to prevent pain from the sudden lack of light. You don’t want to be blinded and the action has the added benefit of pleasing your captor. He put a hood over your hood when he grabbed you, muttering in your ear in tense tones that you would do best to not even try to see him.
Say what you will, you usually do a pretty good job at following directions. This one is easy and happens to be number one on your list right now – keep him happy so he keeps you alive.
“Good girl,” a gruff voice says before a calloused hand gropes the back of your neck to yank you forward. Scratchy fabric envelops your head and your hot breath bounces back against you, trapped against the fabric of the hood.
You stand when his hands start to grab your waist, pulling yourself to your knees and allowing yourself to be lifted from the trunk.
You want to run but know now’s not the time.
“Look at how well-behaved you are!” His breath is wet against your neck. He stands too close, hands clawing under the hem of your shirt to cling to your skin.
He walks you forward like that, chest pressed against your back and breath slithering down the collar of your shirt to hang uncomfortably over your collarbones.
It’s becoming increasingly more obvious what this sicko wants from you and your stomach is twisting at the thought. You urge the team to hurry up, knowing your absence would have been missed ages ago. They have to be looking for you by now. And, with how sloppy this dude seems to be, he must have left a plethora of clues waiting to be found.
You have to repeat this to yourself as you hear a door lock click.
“Took you long enough. This is the girl? She’s kind of … well,” the second man kisses his teeth with a sharp sound. You’re pushed forward again. “Whatever floats your boat man.” The door shuts and locks behind you. The second man's voice fades as he talks, disinterested.
You wonder if it’s wrong to feel slightly insulted right now.
“This way, doll.”
You listen. It’s saving your life to be complicit in his directions, so you listen. Still, you’re shoved harshly to the floor once you get to where he wants you, knees striking what feels like cement. Before you can recover, your cheek stings and your head is whipping to the side from a sudden slap.
Then, there’s a kick to your ribs. You fall onto your side, too winded to even cry out, lips falling open in a silent scream. A boot in your belly. Your ribs again, your hip and back.
“Why?” You manage to sob out. “Why, why?”
You don’t get an answer.
-
You’re not overly religious but you thank whatever heavens or universe exists that he leaves you alone once he’s done kicking the shit out of you. Your ribs are bruised but the worst you expected hasn’t happened.
The boredom returns as you lay with throbbing ribs. At least one is broken and every breath hurts. You can’t imagine sitting up and, luckily, with your hands tied behind your back, it’s not really an option anyway.
It must be near an hour later when you’re fading out of consciousness – a purposeful choice on your part to save your energy – when you hear the front door burst down.
“FBI! Hands where I can see them!” Morgan. You nearly weep but think better when your stuttered gasp makes your side throb.
“What the fuck?” You hear shouted in reply. “Robb, what the fuck man.”
There isn’t much of a resistance from the living room. The second man is shouting at what you can only assume is the first – your initial kidnapper – but there’s nothing else other than that.
“Clear!” You hear Hotch call. Spencer replies and then you hear the door nearest you open.
His voice calls out your name. You deflate against the floor. A second, you know he’s scanning the room with his gun before holstering it. “Clear! I need a medic!”
Hands, gentle, against your face, removing the hood. Swifter after that, removing your gag, and then hand binds.
“Hey, Spence,” you say, trying to smile up at him.
“Shh, you’re okay. We’ve got you.” He starts to support your weight behind your shoulders and the pain that brings is too intense to prevent your yelp.
“Oh my god, is she okay?” You hear Emily ask seconds before you see her. She looks concerned, hair now in a tight ponytail and FBI vest strapped over her chest. She whispers your name once and then a second time, reaching forward to gently brush your hair out of your eyes.
“Hey, pretty,” you say, words tumbling out of your mouth before you can catch them.
“Hi beautiful,” she answers, reply just as soft as your own. Earnest.
It makes your heart ache and, for the first time since being yanked off the road walking to grab lunch, you start to cry.
“Hey, hey, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, beautiful, it’s okay. You’re okay.” She repeats this as you’re lifted by the paramedics and cry harder.
She repeats it when they stitch up where kicks burst the skin over your cheekbone open, repeats it as she trails a hand down your arm in gentle patterns while they examine your ribs and confirm that you’ve broken two, maybe three.
She tries with you in the ambulance.
You can’t help but think about being on the phone when you heard Emily be shot weeks earlier. You squeeze your eye shut as they insert the IV, beyond grateful that she’s there to hold your hand while they do it. The tear that falls down your cheek has nothing to do with the pain and everything to do with the thought that you couldn’t have been there for her in the same way.
An odd thought, you realize, but it’s the one you’re stuck with as you drift away when the pain medicine enters your system.
-
You’re sent home three days later. You insist on spending the night alone, afraid to admit you’re scared because, honestly, nothing much happened to you.
Oh, of course, everyone tries to convince you otherwise but you know they’ve all had it worse. You were gone from the bureau for about eight hours and spent most of it bored.
So you force yourself to spend the night alone. You don’t need help moving around or doing things for yourself so you convince yourself you don’t need help.
You’re cooking dinner when the doorbell rings. You wipe your hands with a dish towel and take your time walking to the door to look through the peephole. You don’t know who took you yet, you haven’t asked and nobody has said, but you can imagine seeing him through the door. Waiting for you, waiting to kill you this time.
Okay, yeah, maybe Spencer was right when he talked about PTSD and usual levels of anxiety, but you’re so tired of him being so right all of the time that you really want to prove him right.
There is no man standing on the other side of the door, though. Instead, you see Emily, holding a plate wrapped in tin foil and looking serene in your apartment hallway.
You open the door quickly, unlatching it and turning off your alarm with a few clicks. “Emily?”
“Ah, man, I was getting used to Emmy,” she jokes, stepping inside with a smile in your direction and kicking off her shoes.
You can’t think of an answer so you just smile at her, hoping she’ll take the lead. You’re tired and she must see it because she offers the plate in her hands to you once the door is closed and the alarm is reengaged.
“Rossi sent me with it with explicit instructions to not let you share it.”
You giggle and take the plate. “I’ll have to tell him thank you. It’s kind of out of your way to come all this way, though, isn’t it?”
“Not out of my way at all,” she says, words dripping with meaning as she holds your eyes. “I would have come even if Rossi didn’t have food for you.”
“So why are you here?”
“To make a fool of myself,” she says, casually, like that’s something people say every day, “probably. You’ve just gotten back from the hospital and I know you said you wanted to be alone, but,” she swallows and her words are becoming more rushed as she speaks, “I said the same thing and you still stayed.”
“Emily?” You ask, setting the plate down on your hallway table and clearing your throat. “Ah, Emmy?” You amend when she cuts you a look. Your attempt to diffuse the tension doesn’t work and she steps closer so you’re toe to toe.
“That doesn’t really answer your question, though. You’re sweet enough that you would let it go, but,” she shrugs, reaching forward to gently loop her fingers around your wrists. “Stop me if this is awful timing. Please,” she says, leaning forward and staring into your eyes.
You feel like you’re suffocating, but if this is death, you’ll greet it gladly in the irises of Emily Prentiss. You’re caught in the trap of the moment, heart hardly breathing, all aches and sores forgotten because Emily is leaning closer, breath fanning across your face. You feel intoxicated, ensnared.
Everything that has ever been exists here, now, in this moment. Every breath used to blow out birthday candles and blow away eyelashes – breaths with purpose, with wishes, with intent – exists between the two of you as she leans closer and closer. Closer, still, and how can so much distance exist between you two when you’ve been standing so closely?
“Just, stop me, if you want,” she whispers against your lips, eyes falling shut.
Time yawns again, freezing. Your eyes open, hers closed, beats of seconds pausing. Hesitating for you to hold this moment in your hands. You’re grateful to appreciate it because she really is so lovely. Her bangs are pushed back from her face with a headband – imagine that! Emily owns headbands! – and you can see every detail of her face. Her elegant nose, her slim eyebrows, her narrow, prominent, lips.
And then your heart finally catches up, beats loudly, cracks whatever fragile plane of glass holding the moment so perfectly still, and her lips are meeting yours.
You gasp into her mouth, hands breaking out of her hold to grab her face. You’re afraid that she’s going to pull away before this kiss can be fully real. Before you can actually taste her – lemon cake and rain and warmth. Before you can memorize the feel of her lips pressed against your own before you can drag her closer and slip your hands into her hair.
But she doesn’t pull away. She meets your enthusiasm with a sigh and then enthusiasm tenfold. You can feel relief in the kiss, feel how she relaxes into you. She takes a step forward and you take one back half the amount to account for it.
A tilt of your head and it’s better, impossibly. She’s firm, sturdy, beautiful. Confident. Lovely, lovely, lovely.
And then she reaches forward to hold you to her, hands brushing your ribs to wrap around your back and you can’t hold in the gasp of pain that causes you to stiffen. You want to take it back, want to ignore the pain, want to keep her near, but she won’t allow it.
“Oh, I’m so so sorry. Are you okay? I’m sorry.” You smush the apologies against her lips, removing one hand from her hand to guide her arms around your shoulders where they won’t hurt. “Okay! Okay,” she giggles, leaning back with several short kisses that do nothing to satiate you. “I need to know you’re okay.”
She can obviously tell she hasn’t hurt you too bad by your reaction, but the sweet caution in her voice has you melting further.
“I’m perfect.”
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take the call
rating: t ♥️ cw: off-screen car accident (but EVERYTHING IS FINE), hurt/comfort, softness ♥️ tags: established relationship, married steddie, hurt/comfort, rockstar Eddie/teacher Steve, Steve's heart of gold is very possibly going to be Eddie's undoing one of these days, well-worn-soul-deep love
for @steddielovemonth day eighteen: Love is terrifying (@starryeyedjanai)
set in the 00s, with Steve and Eddie having two decades of loving under their belts, now ♥️
Eddie isn’t expecting a call, any call, really; he’s in the studio, like, if he gets a call someone takes a message or whatever.
And in fairness, Eddie doesn’t get the call.
He gets a message.
“Eddie?”
He rolls his eyes kinda automatically, kinda thoughtlessly at the cut of the audio track to let the mic system override from outside the booth.
“Okay, so, like, don’t freak out.”
He’s not thoughtless at all about the way he clocks the tension in Jeff’s voice even across the speaker system; it’s entirely automatic how he freezes, how he looks up and locks eyes with his friend through the glass and sucks in a sharp breath for the look on his face: pained.
Maybe, maybe scared.
Eddie’s heart drops somewhere near his knees, but beats there so fucking hard.
“This lady called, and she said she found Lainie’s card inside the case of a phone she picked up,” and okay, okay, that’s…that’s random but maybe it’s about their assistance manger, who just got her contract confirmed and got fancy new business cards for it and has been handing them out to everybody she sees, even gave Eddie extras to pass on to Steve, maybe he can share them at the school as if anyone at even a hoity-toity private 6-through-12 school would have a reason for a card from a record label but she’s excited, and Eddie’s excited for her, and Steve loves the people Eddie works with, and not just because they’re attached to Eddie and he loves the things that come with Eddie as a given—but that’s also true, and always has been, but—
“She, um,” Jeff’s voice is filtering through again, and Eddie clocks that there’s…there’s something more to it, more than his brain’s willing to grasp just yet but his body’s apparently picked up on because he thinks the slightest breeze would knock him over and shatter him into pieces, for the tightness in his body; he’s not focused enough to count the separate beats of his pulse but he can tell it’s quick enough already, still weighed down near his feet, that counting would be kinda hard, would take effort:
“She found the phone at a car crash?”
So: the more-to-it. The thing his body already knew.
Eddie…Eddie doesn’t even need to know what comes next to know he cannot fucking breathe.
“Sounded kinda like, uh, like it could have been Steve’s phone,” Jeff is trying to tell him, and part of Eddie hears it, part of him does but most of him is white noise, is pins-and-needles, is underwater and drowning and not even fucking thinking of fighting the pull because he can’t, he’s heavy at the legs and his lungs are seizing and there’s, he’s—
“Because it, umm, she found the card because the case was broken?” and just last night Eddie’d watched Steve pop off the case and slide the cards behind with a laugh and a promise to take them with him not today—because it’s one of those federal holidays that only schools notice happening, like the post office is still open—but definitely tomorrow, never knew which of the kiddos at the Rich People School might be a budding metalhead underneath their uniforms—
“And she said the case was, um, like bright—“
Green.
Electric lime neon fuckin’ green because after three times of Eddie taking Steve’s phone by accident he’d come home with that endearing eyesore, and a kiss to the bridge of Eddie’s nose and a soft hard to confuse that, babe nuzzled against him and—
“It could maybe have just been a coincide—“ Jeff’s talking but Eddie can’t fucking hear it, not really, not when he’s letting the door slam behind him and ripping off his headphones to drop to the groundnut when he’s gasping hard enough to crack a rib, not when the floor’s gone out from underneath him and his vision’s tunneled and nothing seems real, and everything feels too real, every world ending possibility shuddering through his foggy mind alongside every heartbreakingly perfect memory blossoming up unbidden just to serve as a reminder, an underscoring of what he stands to lose, what maybe he’s already fucking lost—
He meets Jeff’s eyes without the glass between them as he grabs his keys from his jacket on the couch and makes himself take the breath that’ll fuel the voice, that’ll give him words, just one word, he needs, he fucking needs—
“Where?”
_______________________
Eddie shouldn’t have driven himself, he knows that.
Like, on some other plane of existing, he’s sure he knows that.
But on this plane, he rips past his bandmates, all the extra people with them for recording, jams the close-door button before anyone can follow him into the elevator because he happens to know this one’s quicker than the stairs even on a good day, and this—
Eddie’s shaking so goddamn hard he can barely get one foot in front of the other, he really doesn’t think he can manage ten fucking flights of steps.
He burns rubber on the way out of the parking lot, and the nearest hospital to where Steve would have been—on his day off, because holiday, he’d have bene close to home, he mentioned food shopping, he thought he might make stir-fry but he wasn’t sure, they hadn’t made a vegetable haul from the Asian market downtown in a couple weeks and they need to, they need to but Steve wasn’t feeling like going on his own, because he might not say it out loud but they both know he enjoys Eddie’s excitability when new items hit the shelves and he can’t read the language they’re labelled in so he guesses frantically until the man who owns the place takes pity, only laughs a little and explains what this spice is for, or that that crazy looking thing’s a fruit, and they ultimately buy whatever it is because Eddie wants to try it now, because he got invested and—
Eddie should pull off the fucking road; his head’s a mess, he can’t see for the way his eyes are welling, streaming, the way he’s shaking with sobs that don’t exactly burst forth, just leak from his lashes as he trembles horrifically because…
Because they were maybe gonna have stir-fry, tonight. Even without the good vegetables.
They were—
Eddie thinks it’s fucking cruel, kind of unbearably so, that his brain’s dead-set on still processing the mundane little perfections of his life as if every single one of them might be dashed to pieces, might be hanging by a thread, might be entirely fucking gone, and he, he…
He can’t. He just, he fucking can’t.
Because that the thing, isn’t it: the scenarios he’s imagining aren’t hypothetical—they’re all memories, too. Steve bloodied, Steve bruised, Steve’s bones broken and flesh torn. Steve still, too still; Steve’s skin under Eddie’s hands when he can’t find a pulse because Eddie’s shaking, same as now how Eddie is fucking shaking—
Eddie knows all those things. They’re so long ago, now, so distant but his fucking cells will never forget every single moment he saw the man he loves bigger than his own goddamn life hurt like that; be risked like that. Be lost like—
And that’s the difference. That’s what is unravelling him as he speeds through the streets quicker than he should, probably breaking more laws than he could count and definitely more than he gives a shit to notice: it’s the losing.
Because the first times, even the times that came after Steve was his: they didn’t come with the loss of so much time, so much of themselves, so much glorious life that they’d built between them, the struggles and the triumphs, the hard choices and the easy things that weren’t choices at all: everything hand-in-hand, every night spent curled around each other, all of them, all of him, inside that chest since he was twenty fucking year old, and Eddie doesn’t just not know how to be outside of what he shares with Steve.
Eddie doesn’t think his own heart can survive, if if Steve’s isn’t next to him.
Eddie’s damn fucking sure no part of him would want to.
It takes him a minute to steady himself enough to get out of the car, once he finally reaches the ER. Steady his body, but more his fucking soul because the whole of him is shaking, is crying out, is wailing unfettered and breaking because he’s terrified, he is goddamn terrified of what he’s going to find when he walks in but he has to, he has to because whatever awaits him, that’s his husband, that is the love of his whole goddamn life and if the worst is going to come for him he’ll face it like he’s faced everything else: at Steve Harrington’s side.
If the worst comes for one of them, then it came for them both.
So he’s stumbling, shuddering, but resolute in his chest when he flies through the sliding doors, eyes still swimming, unfocused but he makes himself take a deep breath—it takes a few tries, and he doesn’t quite succeed, it’s still a tremorous thing and his lungs are still in revolt, but it’s something, and he’ll take something; he has to to take something—
“Eddie?”
He almost doesn’t register it, the voice from the sick-spiral of his memories, all the love on the table to be forfeit—
He almost doesn’t register that his name’s not coming from inside his head.
“Oh my god, what happened?” There’s a flurry over motion in front of him, and he blinks rapidly to try and pin it down because it looks familiar, it smells familiar, it aches familiar in his chest but:
“What is it, what’s wrong?” and fuck, it feels familiar when a hand reaches for his cheek where it’s still damp, tacky for the tears; when another hand slides itself into Eddie’s and draws him in, a hand that fits like no other hand in this world or any other, ever—
“Are you okay?”
And the hand on his cheek turns him and follows his eyes and it takes that long for him to clear his vision properly, but now he’s just blinking so much because that, that can’t be, even if it feels in every goddamn way like it really is, but it can’t…
It can’t be Steve here, whole and on his feet and looking at Eddie with so much worry, so much heart as he tilts Eddie’s chin a little this way, that way, squints to try and see…something.
Eddie’s breath tears out of him in a wet fucking gasp;
“Am I okay?”
Because Eddie’s really not the one to fucking worry about here, Steve had—
“You’re in a hospital, Eds, that’s not usually where you go when you’re okay,” Steve’s eyes widen as he he slides both hands now to Steve’s head, holding him still and assessing…something, maybe, Jesus: Eddie doesn’t know, but he does know that the touch on him now makes his…makes his heart feel safe and he’d been fucking terrified he’d never feel that again.
“Fuck, what happened, baby, did you hit your,” and fingers are dancing gentle across points on Eddie’s skull, so delicate and careful and he can’t fucking help it—
“Are you real?”
Because he needs to know, he needs to know with words because this feels…this feels right and warm and impossible but also true, so.
He needs to know.
“Am I…?” Steve’s lips part and his brow furrows before his jaw clenches in that dependable way he has of squaring up to the monster at hand, no matter the kind.
“Shit,” he breathes out slow but then he nods: resolved; “shit, okay. Okay, let’s find—“
“You are real,” and it turns out Eddie didn’t actually need him to say it. He just needed to see the flash in Steve’s eyes when he was ready to take on the world for the sake of love, the way he positions himself a little different in front of Eddie as he keeps one hand at Eddie’s cheek but then slides to brace more at his neck, purposeful, like he’s splinting a wound or something, and then a hand grabs for Eddie’s own again and: oh.
Oh yes. That is Steve Harrington, living and breathing and solid and real, because no one else protects like this.
No one.
Eddie’s heart stumbles, jackrabbits around a little, almost like a reset: like it knows as the implications sink in to Eddie’s mind that it’s not destined to break anymore.
“Yeah,” Steve agrees too easily, distracted as he tugs the gentlest bit at Eddie’s hand, toward the nurse’s station; “yeah, and we should—“
“And you’re okay?”
“I’m fine,” Steve shrugs it off, but Eddie…Eddie’s vision is clearing. His pulse is settling. He can hear above the static and his limbs are getting lighter.
“You’re one-hundred-percent okay, not a scratch on you, not a single thing wrong,” he needs to make sure, like, so fucking sure.
“I am fine, Eddie,” Steve turns to look him straight on, exasperated and anxious and vibrant with it, so alive in it; “but you’re—“
Eddie’s hand moves almost without his conscious consent, definitely without a plan to grab at Steve’s arm and pinch his skin because Eddie was vaguely toying with the idea of pinches himself, and maybe with poking Steve a few extra times to make sure he didn’t disappear, but apparently his brain landed on: pinch Steve, avoid confirmation bias if your head wants to lie enough to make him real just you you, because you need him that bad.
Steve startles, and turns those beautiful brilliant bronze eyes on Eddie, stretches wide as he gapes a little at his husband.
Eddie…Eddie is here, in front of his living-breathing-gorgeously-aghast husband.
“Okay, oww,” Steve drops Eddie’s hand and pulls back, leaving Eddie’s head to its own devices as he looks a little shocked, shooting just shy of a glare Eddie’s way: full of questions.
Eddie—now that the biggest one’s solved, and solved so perfect, so gentle and sure and he doesn’t have to bury the soul of him; he doesn’t have to bury his soul—but now?
Eddie also has some fucking questions.
“Where’s your phone?” seems the most relevant to start with.
Steve blinks, frowns a little:
“It got lost in the crash—“
“Crash?” Eddie’s tone pitches up to squeak a little because: Steve’s here and whole in from of him, yes. But fuck, there was still a crash? He was—
“Not mine, my car’s still parked at fucking Jiffy Lube,” Steve adds with a huff; “I saw it happen so I stopped and—“
And Eddie knows his husband. He knows his husband better than he knows himself, and Eddie’s kinda made it a point of pride for how self-aware he’s grown to be these days, in living this life and loving Steve beyond the bounds of living at all. But he knows his Steve, and so he knows damn well what happened.
Car runs into car. Steve sees it and jumps out to help. Because Steve Harrington is a protector. Steve Harrington is a helper. Steve Harrington is the best man Eddie’s ever known.
Soon as he jumped into the fray, he wouldn’t have thought once about a fucking phone.
And Eddie, Eddie just, he needs to—
He grabs Steve’s hands and wraps them around his own waist, lets them go and then pulls Steve tight to his chest and buries his face in Steve’s shoulder as Eddie winds his way around his husband, feels him breathing, feels the tickle of his hair.
“You’re gonna kill me, Stevie,” Eddie whimpers, that going tight now all over again:
“You’ve got the biggest heart of fucking gold the world’s ever seen,” he moans into Steve’s collar; “and you’re going to fucking kill me.”
Steve doesn’t say anything, but his hands move up to rub Eddie’s back, rote and learned and he might not wholly get, yet, what Eddie’s putting together, and where Eddie’s head’s been, what his heart’s been through, but the first thing he knows, and does like clockwork, is to love of his partner, to soothe him even if he doesn’t know what for.
“Someone found your phone, and they, umm,” Eddie licks his lips, takes a suffering breath and tries to straighten but he’s not ready, not yet: he slumps right back onto Steve’s shoulder:
“They called the studio.”
“Shit,” Steve hisses, bunches his hands in Eddie’s shirt and draws him tighter to his chest: “shit, they interrupted,” and oh, fuck no, fuck regretting the interruption—
“They told me they found it at a crash site,” Eddie grits out, the hurt of it still raw, like just saying the words no matter where they landed in trust, just recalling those minutes that felt like full nightmarish lifetimes, reopens the tender wounds it’d left in hims; “they found it with the case broken,” and Steve leans back, then, eyes saucers as he meets Eddie’s gaze, breath catches harsh.
“Oh,” Steve whispers, eyes darting back and forth between Eddie’s, taking the whole of him in and then he exhales so heavy:
“Oh, babe,” he murmurs, fucking mournful before he takes his hands and links them behind the base of Eddies’ skull and draws him in to the center of his chest, envelopes him there whole: “come here.”
And Eddie falls into that chest—rising-falling-living—he falls into Steve so fucking fast
“I am totally fine, I promise you,” Steve breathes again Eddie’s ear, close and dear and real: “car’s fine—“
“I don’t fucking care about the car—“ Eddie tenses up, appalled at the implication that he gave one single goddamn thought to the car—
“No, like, as proof,” Steve’s quick to correct him, to ease the hackles on him; “I wasn’t in the crash, but it was pretty bad and,” Steve shrugs a little then adds soft: “I keep my first aid certs up to date for a reason, I figure, right?”
Jesus; yes, okay. Steve’s savior complex had largely mellowed to a non-interdimensional-threat level with time but he’s meticulous about keeping every skillset he’d gone out of his way to learn from professionals before they’d gone up against the Upside Down for the last time sharp and at the ready for anything: even now.
Fuck, but this beautiful, brilliant, impossible man.
“I was helping, best I could, until the EMTs got there,” Steve tells him softly, fills in the gaps because he knows Eddie’s mind, all the pictures it paints for itself, and in times like these it’s always the worst possible pictures—he knows Eddie needs the slate wiped clean with the truths, blessedly softer, in this:
“Police wanted me to stick around for a statement but the girl who was driving the first car, she was so panicked and she didn’t want to go alone so, umm,” Steve huffs a little, shifts against Eddie gentle and solid and here: “she said she knew me, she was pretty desperate I think, so I rode here with her,” and of course he did, of course he did because he’s Steve; “now I’m just waiting to make sure she gets out of surgery okay,” he squeezes Eddie then, like a punctuation, and it feels so, so fucking good; “also still have to give the goddamn statement, but fuck knows that’s just hurry-up-and-wait,” he turns, and he kisses Eddie’s hair then and Eddie feels something snap in him, give way and the lingering tension spill from his frame as he gasp a little on a breathy exhale:
“I love you so much,” and he does, god: god, but how much he loves this man.
“I love you too, baby,” Steve mouths against his head and Eddie closes his eyes and nuzzles his a little closer as he puts it into words, because it feels like he needs to, it feels like in Steve’s arms like this, pressed up close to him to feel this undeniable life in him: it feels like the coast is clear enough to risk it, to confess:
“I was so fucking scared,” and the words only break a little, and that’s more than Eddie honestly expected.
“I am so sorry,” Steve bows his chin down to graze lips against Eddie’s hairline, delicate and intimate and shivery, trembly down Eddie’s spin for the best of reasons, now.
“Not your fault,” Eddie’s quite to counter, to make clear, because: “shit, you didn’t do anything, I just…”
Eddie makes himself pull back and meet Steve’s eyes, reaches out to frame his face, dear and desperate:
“I can’t lose you,” he moans a little, begs a little, says it with a bare line of something primal echoing in it, scraped straight from his bones: “I cannot ever lose you.”
“I know,” Steve turns and kisses one of his palms, and those two words hold the promise of five more they’ve said so many times, and held so true between them for so many year, through so fucking much:
It’s the same for me.
And to be loved the same as he loves is a fucking privilege; it’s heady and it’s wonderful and Eddie needs it, needs Steve, more than goddamn air.
“Sit with me?” Steve covers Eddie’s hands with his at his cheeks, and nods a little toward the blessedly-quiet collection of chairs by the windows; “while I wait?”
“Nowhere else I’d go,” Eddie says it like the given that it is, and pulls Steve close to kiss him full, to press his lips to Steve’s and drink his warmth, his breath, to feel it sink int past his heart and pump through his veins:
“Not ever, Stevie,” he speaks against Steve’s lips, all of him in it, every vow inside it:
“Not ever.”
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