#the fact that I’ll never get to feel his lips against mine 🥲

[doll-elvis]

linda thompson wasn’t exaggerating when she said kissing Elvis was like kissing a marshmallow 🥲

credit to: “elvisgirly” on twitter for the pics

[em-prentiss]

so I may or may not reread your "when you know, you know" fic, and wow :') I don't know what's wrong with me, but my first thought after reading it was "I can't imagine how it feels like to lose someone you love that much". sooooo.. it's okay if you don't want to.. but do you ever consider writing a fic about the aftermath of hotch losing emily?

okay first of all the fact that you reread it makes me so happy you don’t even know😭 I feel like it’s definitely an overlooked fic of mine even though I really really love it—so for that thank you!

if there’s something wrong with you there’s definitely something wrong with me too because I actually have thought of it more than once🥲 I didn’t know if anyone would like to read it because for me I usually avoid major death warnings like the plague but if someone’s interested I could definitely try!

I think death and grief are topics that are difficult to manage properly, so I’ll try to do it, but I can’t promise anything 🫶🏼 Thank you so much for requesting!!🩷

Edit: here you go, bestie! I cried multiple times while writing this <3 I hope you enjoy it!!

that old familiar body ache, the snaps from the same little breaks in my soul

----

Warning: Major character death

“Em?” He calls out into the dark. Maybe, just maybe, this was all a horrible dream and she’ll come right back into his arms, a smile on her face that he’ll pretend annoys him but really is the highlight of his day. “Emily, sweetheart?” His voice cracks when he’s met by silence again and the sniffles of his children.

----

She doesn’t like the dark.

Aaron shuts the door and climbs into bed next to Emily. She immediately snuggles into him, sighing in satisfaction when his warm arm wraps around her. “I forgot to ask,” she looks up at him and arches her brow, “do you hog the covers?”

He laughs into her forehead. “And if I say yes? Will you kick me out of my own bed?” He teases. Emily rolls her eyes. “I just might,” she mumbles into his shirt.

Aaron grabs her hand and kisses it lightly. “We both know you wouldn’t be able to sleep without me.”

Emily harrumphs and flips him off. Aaron grabs her hand and pushes her into the bed, his laugh muffled in her neck. Emily smiles when she feels the vibration of it in her body.

Aaron looks up at her. “I love you.” He says.

“I love you too,” she beams at him. She kisses him lightly before turning on her side. “Night,” Emily yawns. “Goodnight, Em,” Aaron whispers.

He turns around to turn off the lamp on his nightstand. The room is suddenly cloaked in thick darkness, not even the streetlight pouring through his blackout curtains. 

Emily’s heart starts to pound and though she’s wrapped around him, his chest firmly against her back, she struggles to breathe.

The darkness is suffocating, and when she closes her eyes it’s no different than when she opens them. Emily grips Aaron’s hands on her waist. “Aaron?” Her voice is tight, slightly breathy, and Aaron is suddenly aware of how tense she is in his arms.

“Em? What’s wrong, sweetheart?” She can hear his voice right against her ear, feel his breath hitting her neck, but it’s not enough. 

“Turn on the light.”

Aaron immediately complies and switches on the lamp again. Emily relaxes when the warm light of it floods the room, painting him golden.

“Thank you,” she blows out a shuddering breath and runs a hand through her hair. Aaron frowns when she smiles shakily at him. “You’re afraid of the dark?”

She never would’ve admitted it to anyone else, but he’s different; she feels safe with him. Emily nods and bites her lip. “My apartment in Paris was always dark,” she wraps her arms around herself and leans back against the headboard. “I had to get blackout curtains.”

“I’m sorry,” Aaron wraps an arm around her shoulders and kisses her forehead. She smiles up at him sadly. “It’s okay,” she strokes his jaw. “I just don’t like to sleep in the dark anymore. Can we keep the light on? Or maybe crack the door open?”

“Of course.” His reply is immediate, and so is her smile—genuine this time. “Yeah, we can do that,” he gets up to open the door, leaving it slightly open. Emily watches as he makes his way to the window and pulls up the curtain so that half of it is uncovered. Streetlight pours into the room.

“You don’t have to do all that, honey,” Emily smiles, feeling as if her heart would burst from her love for him. “Just one is fine.”

Aaron climbs back into bed and hugs her close. “I’ll change the curtains tomorrow.” He whispers into her hair.

Emily clutches his shirt in her fist, breathing in deep to chase away the lump in the back of her throat. “Thank you, Aaron.”

They never slept in the dark since. And now they were putting her in the ground. It doesn’t even feel real; it’s like his living his worst nightmare and he can’t wake up from it, no matter how hard he pinches his skin.

She didn’t even want to get up from bed that morning.

“Hey, what’s up with you today?” Aaron nudges Emily lightly. She had him trapped under her for the better part of two hours, steadfastly refusing to get up or let him get out of bed.

Emily sighs. “You know I used to remember a time when you loved me like this,” she grumbles. Aaron laughs and pinches her nose playfully. 

“You’re so dramatic.” His voice is fond, loving as he eases her off of him and onto her back. She quickly wraps her arms around his neck to keep him flush against her.

“I’m just asking. Are you tired? Feeling lazy?” He runs his hands up her arms, the skin more freckled than it was, but petal soft under his fingers. It’s looser now, not as tight as it used to be, something she hates but something he relishes, a physical sign that they’re growing old together.

“I just want to cuddle with my giant teddy bear of a husband, is that okay with you?” She arches her brow. Aaron smiles and kisses her jaw. “More than okay with me.”

She encourages him to relax on top of her, rest his full weight against her until she’s squashed beneath him. Aaron stays silent for a few minutes, closing his eyes and breathing her in, feeling her heart beat under his ear.

A knock on the door breaks their peace. “Mom, Dad?” Matthew calls out, his voice muffled through the wood. “Isn’t it pancake day today?” He asks. Emily hears the teasing in his voice, can almost imagine him leaning against the doorframe with that smirk of his that she loves just as much as she hates.

“Can’t you make them yourself?” She yells from under her husband, feeling absolutely no urge to move, not even for her baby boy who’s far from a baby, and who can make his own damn pancakes today.

Aaron chuckles above her and she smiles. Emily kisses his cheek lightly, right in the groove of his dimple. “They wouldn’t be as good.” Matthew says. Emily ignores him and goes back to kissing Aaron, her hand sliding under his shirt.

“C’mon Em, it’s pancake day,” Aaron smiles at her, his eyes shining. “We can cuddle more later, I promise.”

She breathes out a long, tortured sigh and nods. Aaron pecks her quickly and gets up, changing out of his pajamas as she watches. She hadn’t lied to him, she did just want to simply cuddle with him, but she feels something else too. Something in her gut urging her to seize every moment she has with him. Emily shakes the feeling off and changes into a shirt of his and sweatpants, wanting to feel him with her throughout the day, the scent of the shirt calming her down instantly.

She walks into the kitchen first and smiles at her son, sitting at the counter. “Morning, Matthew.”

“Morning. Nice of you guys to join me,” Matthew says as he sips his coffee. Emily rolls her eyes and ruffles his hair, smiling when he presses a kiss to her cheek. Of all her children, he especially inherited her love for affection. She loves that he never pushes her away, always chases after her for hugs and hair scratches even though he’s well into his twenties.

“Hush, it’s our day off.” Emily says as she takes out the ingredients for Aaron. They’d long since retired from the BAU and work at the academy now, Emily handling the physical training of the recruits while Aaron teaches them the art of profiling.

“Look at you, being helpful,” Aaron smiles when he walks into the kitchen and sees Emily measuring out the milk and pouring it into a bowl.

Emily looks up and narrows her eyes at him. “Is that sarcasm I detect in your tone?” She crosses her arms, hiding her smile when he reaches her and presses his lips to hers. 

“What? Of course not, sweetheart.” He says theatrically, uncrossing her arms on her chest so he can kiss her hand. The light streaming into the kitchen lights up his eyes and the deep lines carved around them, the ever growing gray hairs at his temple turning pure white. Somehow he’s even more handsome than she remembers, with his salt and pepper hair and the soft skin of his stomach. Something about him now, just like this, makes her heart beat irrationally fast in her chest.

Emily forgets her pretend quarrel with him and cups his face with her palm. “I love you,” she says quietly, her heart racing as she says the words. She tilts his face down so she can kiss his forehead, her lips lingering against his hairline.

Matthew smiles and rolls his eyes, yet again forgotten by his parents because of their endless infatuation with each other. “Okay, okay, we get it, you’re in love,” he says, but his voice is gentle, “can I please have my pancakes now?”

Aaron lifts his head and looks at his wife, who throws her son an exasperated look. “Remind me again why decided to have him?” He kisses her cheek and pushes her to the chairs so she can sit down.

Emily rolls her eyes. “Must’ve been horny,” she quips, laughing when Matthew chokes on his coffee. “Mom!”

It was a peaceful morning. Until Emily had a stroke out of nowhere, as she was pouring syrup on her pancakes. It had splashed all over the table as her arm trembled, making Aaron and Matthew’s gazes snap up at her in confusion.

Fear climbed Aaron’s throat as he watched her face droop, recognition flaring when he asked her to repeat a simple sentence that she slurred out. He’d yelled for Matthew to call an ambulance, but on the way to the hospital, she was gone.

He’d known immediately when the doctor approached them with the same expression he himself had used countless times on grieving families. He was shaking his head before the I’m sorry left the doctor’s lips.

No, no. Not his Emily. She’s still young. She's healthy, isn’t she? She indulges in her food, yes, but she runs with him on the weekends, doesn’t drink excessively, takes regular medical checkups and tests. She’s fine. His wife is fine. She can’t be gone. She’ll come out from behind the door any minute, a teasing smile on her lips as she wraps her arms around him and says, “You didn’t think I’d leave you, did you?”

Because Emily is always right there. Just next to him, always within reach, even before they were married, before they started dating.

But then he looked at Matthew. His whole world crumbled as he looked into his son’s eyes—Emily’s really—already overflowing with tears, his bottom lip trembling as he shook his head, disbelieving.

“She didn’t feel it. She passed peacefully.” 

The words blurred in his ears, as if he were underwater. Passed. That was the word that broke him. Aaron clutched his son, held him to his chest as they both broke down, sliding down onto the cold hospital floor with no one to raise them up because the light of their lives was gone.

He still doesn’t know who did it. Who arranged the funeral, who called the team and his other two children. He’s been in a daze, walking around with a throbbing hole in his chest, feeling off kilter because it felt so unbelievably wrong that she wasn’t next to him. 

He barely slept, spending half the night clutching her pillow in shock, sobbing into it because she was right there this morning, begging him for a few more minutes in bed and he’d pulled her away from it.

He hadn’t been aware that the sun rose until Dave appeared out of nowhere, his eyes red and swollen, and forced him up, hung a suit on the back of the door and went to check on his son to make sure he did the same. 

And then suddenly they’re in a graveyard and Aaron is trying so damn hard to hold himself together, because Jack hasn’t stopped sobbing from the moment he saw him and Olivia has gone ghost white, her arms wrapped around herself as if she might shatter any second.

He gathers them all in his arms, his children, and tries to be a pillar of strength even though he’s afraid they’re holding up more of him than he’s holding of them. Jack clings to him as he had when Haley died, only he fully understands what’s going on now. He keeps wiping under his eyes fruitlessly, erasing tears that are immediately replaced and show no signs of stopping. “Emmy’s gone?” He rasps, his voice hoarse.

Aaron doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know how he could possibly console them because he can’t even see the edge of the dark hole they’re in, can’t possible figure out how they’re going to get out of it. She was the light. She was the light and now she’s gone.

“Daddy.” His daughter falls into him, her arms wrapping tightly around his neck. Of all things, this might be what breaks him, hearing his grown daughter call him something she hasn’t called him ever since she was a child.

“I’m here, princess.” He holds on to her tight, clutches her when she buries her face in his neck and trembles, her hot tears wetting his skin.

“She doesn’t like the dark,” Olivia’s voice breaks. Aaron immediately feels hot tears roll down his cheeks. The sob he tries so hard to keep in rips out of his throat. “I know, baby.” He gasps, all at once hit in the face by the reality that she’s gone, gone, and she’s not coming back. “I know.”

He can’t even say something for her. Olivia’s eulogy is static in his ears as he stares into the empty hole waiting for Emily, dark and cruel and everything she hated. Say something, he begs himself. She deserves better. 

She was the love of my life, she was my whole reason for existing. She was the light, he wants to say. But he opens his mouth and the words die in his throat, a choked sob escaping instead, and he feels Jack wrap an arm around his shoulders and pull him in.

He covers his eyes as they lower her into the ground. Aaron just wishes his heart would give out, wishes that they could bury him here with her so that her bones would lay right against his, where they’ve always belonged.

He collapses into Dave, who’s frail and old but he holds him up. His bright white hair blurs in Aaron’s vision and he sobs harder because how is Dave still here and she’s not? She still had so much life in her, her hair barely turning gray and making her huff in annoyance at the sight of it. He’ll never get to see her with her hair white and pure, laugh lines deep in her cheeks, will never hear her complain about her old joints or the complicated language their grandchildren use.

“She doesn’t like the dark,” he whispers brokenly, nausea roiling in his gut because he’s putting his wife in the very place she hated the most. Aaron thinks of her labored breathing their first night together and bile rises in his throat. He shoves Dave away and falls onto his knees, the meager contents of his stomach splashing on the grass.

JJ is there to help him up. She hands him a bottle of water, her eyes bloodshot, and tells him to drink. “She’s gone, JJ. Em’s gone. My wife—” He gasps, unable to finish his sentence.

His wife, his partner. His best friend.

He’s a widow once more. And he knows there’ll be no one else to pick up the pieces after her.

JJ holds him, lets him sob into her shoulder while her tears fall into his hair. He feels her press something into his hand. “I got these for you.” She croaks out.

Aaron looks down at his palm and almost loses it all over again. Her rings. This of all things cements the fact that she’s truly gone. Emily never took off her rings, turned the house upside down in a frenzy if one of them was gone.

“She’s not coming back.” He looks at JJ, his lips trembling. “No,” JJ sobs, shutting her eyes and placing her hand over his, closing his fingers over her rings. “She’s not.”

He lingers at her fresh grave, marked by only a stick with her name on it, until his children surround him and pull him home. He’s glad there’s no reception, no people he’ll be forced to talk to, no hands he’ll have to shake or condolences he’ll have to listen to.

His gratitude fizzles when he enters their home, empty and silent and cold. It’s completely devoid of her, every trace of her gone despite her books still on the shelf, her favorite blanket still thrown over the couch.

“Em?” He calls out into the dark. Maybe, just maybe, this was all a horrible dream and she’ll come right back into his arms, a smile on her face that he’ll pretend annoys him but really is the highlight of his day. “Emily, sweetheart?” His voice cracks when he’s met by silence again and the sniffles of his children. Olivia clutches his hand. “She’s not here, dad.”

“Mom’s not coming back.” Matthew says. It’s the first thing he’s said ever since he collapsed on the hospital floor. He’s stayed quiet all day, simply hovering over his father’s shoulder as if afraid he might be gone, too.

He was her baby, her likeness. A mini Emily, in all ways possible, and Aaron had always adored his son for that. Aaron struggles to look into his eyes now, so breathtakingly like hers.

They help him onto the couch and sit around him. Aaron holds each of them close and whispers reassurances into their hair as they tremble. He kisses Jack’s forehead, holds Olivia’s hand, keeps his palm firmly on Matthew’s shoulder. Emily’s gone but maybe she’ll get to live on like this, in the memory of the children they’d raised together.

Jack has her heart. Her incredible ability to love, the endless compassion she has for others—mere strangers and people she knows alike. Olivia’s got her sharp features, the slope of her nose and the darkness of her hair. Hidden deep down is her temper too, so like Emily’s, liable to catch fire with a single spark and demolish everything in its path. Matthew stole her eyes, perfect copies of Emily’s, down to her thick lashes. In him is her personality; all her sharp tongue and witty humor and fierce protectiveness. They’re the proof that she existed, that she was once here, bright and beautiful.

“She’s still here,” Aaron whispers to them. “She’s in all of us,” he cups his daughter’s face and kisses her forehead. “We’ve all got pieces of her inside of us.” He brushes away Jack’s hair and gives him a weak, watery smile.

He turns to Mattew and tries not to flinch away from his eyes. Aaron kisses the top of his head. “Just hold on tight and don’t let go, okay?”

“Don’t let her go.”

They fall asleep on the couch, tangled together, tears drying on their cheeks, the heavy blanket of grief hanging above them. Aaron holds them, trying to press them into his skin, protect them from this cruel world without Emily in it even though he knows he can’t.

He visits her every day for just two months before his headstone joins hers, side by side in the same plot.

He’s heard of accounts of people dying of heartbreak; a mother passing months after her youngest child, a brother only lasting a handful of weeks before he follows his sister. And now he finally joins his wife.

Barely six weeks after Emily’s passing, Aaron goes quietly too, in his sleep. Her picture is on the pillow he sleeps next to—in the guest room because he couldn’t bear sleeping in their room without her—her rings on a chain around his neck.

“They’re together now.” Jack whispers, each of his arms around his siblings as they look down at their headstones. Aaron Hotchner, right next to Emily Prentiss Hotchner. Side by side, like they’ve always been.