#why is Target emailing me in the first place 😭😭

[tsunderrated]

Is there anyone in the world who’s like “oh boy! An ad!”

[illdowhatiwantthanks]

Hii! Could you possible write something more with Emily and her partner self harming? You write it so incredibly well and I find so much comfort in it, it’s insane. Maybe Emily finding out for the very first time when her partner is actively doing it? <333

Hi, anon! I'm always happy to write hurt/comfort about self-harm. :) It's my genuine hope that it brings people comfort and helps them feel less alone. Much love to you! –illdowhatiwantthanks

Doxxed

Emily Prentiss x fem!reader Warnings: BIG self-harm warning!!!, cutting, blood, mentions of past familial abuse, homophobia, bigotry, use of slurs, explicit language (please let me know if I've missed anything!) Word count: 2.2k

Summary: After you leave a comment in support of a Pride post, the conservative fanbase of the organization comes after you in full force. You can take a lot, but it's more than you can handle. And you're tempted to resort to old, unhealthy coping mechanisms.

One comment. One stupid, stupid comment. That’s all it had taken.

Don’t listen to the haters! Happy Pride! 🏳️‍🌈 Thanks for the support!

You’d left it thoughtlessly, carelessly even, on the Washington Nationals Instagram post for Pride. Frustrated by all the hate and homophobia in the comments, you’d left one of support. You wanted the other queer fans to know they weren’t alone, and for the social media team to know that their post meant something.

You hadn’t expected it to blow up. You hadn’t expected to be the sole target of the Nationals’ conservative fan base. The first few comments, you’d ignored:

WTH is a they?

bro, what is “they” 🙏💀😭

your an npc you cannot be talking

not a fan

I think you mean IT

the Support your dad never gave you huh?

you need to read your bible

by haters you mean 95% of the population?

So, they’d found your profile. They’d seen your pronouns listed as she/they. Your page was private, they shouldn’t have access to anything else. You took deep breaths, turning off your Instagram notifications, trying your best to ignore the red notification alerts climbing into the hundreds, then the thousands.

But the first phone call? That had taken you off guard. It was an unknown number. You shouldn’t even have picked up.

“Hello?” you’d said, so innocent, so unprepared.

“Is this Y/N Y/L/N?”

“Yes, this is she…”

“Do you mean they!? You fucking dyke. Bet your daddy diddled you when you were little, huh? That’s why you’re so fucked up now!? I could fix that real quick. You just need a real dick shoved in you. Where do you live, baby? We can arrange that! You’re disgusting. You need some real cock in your life.”

It was so aggressive, so vulgar, so quick and angry. You couldn’t have gotten a word in if you’d tried. You hung up, shocked, silent. You were used to homophobia. You were used to hate and bigotry. You’d grown up in a place where people had called you a dyke on the streets, where churchgoers pulled you aside in the grocery store to pray over your “lifestyle.” Your parents had hated you long before you came out of the closet, so their revulsion wasn’t a surprise and it didn’t hurt, not any more than they’d already hurt you.

But you were so far away from where you’d come from, and you were so used to feeling safe here. You had Emily and you had the BAU and you were, generally speaking, free to walk around and live your life as your full, truest self without fear. The fact that this phone call, the hatred that came with it, had invaded your home, your safe space–it shook you. You were physically shaken.

But the calls kept coming. Again and again. Nonstop. So many they overlapped one another. So many that your voicemail box was full. And then the emails started. You knew you shouldn’t read them, shouldn’t listen to the voicemails, shouldn’t open up Instagram and scroll through the hateful comments. But you couldn’t stop yourself. And everything you read made you feel lower. You could handle a lot of hate, but this was past your threshold. It was the comments about your family that got to you the most. How did they know!? How did they know where to hit you the hardest? Where you were already weak and wounded and it wouldn’t take much to break you?

Emily was away on a case with the BAU. You wished she was here. You’d feel better if she was with you. More solid, less affected. Somehow, the bigotry never got to Emily, not like it got to you. You knew if she was here, she’d hold you, she’d set up some sort of fancy FBI phone trace and figure out who was calling you, she’d shut down your Instagram or take your phone from you so that you wouldn't be able to read the comments. She’d tell you she loved you, that you were beautiful, perfect, exceptional. She’d tell you that what these people said about you, how they made you feel, was not real, was not who you were. She’d remind you that who your dad thought you were, how he’d treated you, what he’d done to you–that wasn’t you either. That you were hers and you were your own. You were brave and strong and beautiful. But she wasn’t here to tell you any of that, and somehow telling yourself those things didn’t carry the same weight. By the time you fell asleep that night, you were in a spiral of such self-hatred, such hopelessness, such unending anxiety at each buzz of your phone–you hadn’t felt this low since college.

When you woke up the next morning–a Saturday–you turned off your phone, determined not to let the haters get to you, to take control of the day, of your emotions. You meditated. You listened to your favorite music. You made yourself some breakfast.

You stepped outside to go on a walk, knowing that fresh air and movement would do you good, keep you from spiraling further. But you stopped dead in your tracks when you turned to shut the door behind you. Spray-painted in angry red over the door frame of your townhouse was FAGS BURN IN HELL.

You went back inside and slammed the door behind you, trying not to cry. Too much. It was all too much. They had your socials. They had your email. They had your phone number. And now they knew where you lived. Every bit of safety and security you’d worked so hard to build here seemed to be crumbling around you, and there was nothing you could do about it.

And you knew then, like you were watching a film of yourself, watching something that had already happened, that you would go to the bathroom. You would take out a fresh razor blade, and you would drag it across the skin of your forearm. That you would bleed, and the blood would be the tears you didn’t let yourself cry. Just like it had been all those years ago, when you hid from your dad in the bathroom. Like it was in college when you figured out you were gay and hated yourself for it. Like it had been when your dad had died and you’d gone to his funeral and you’d lied and told Emily the wounds were from the barn cat scratching you.

It was magnetic, inevitable almost. The more you fought, the more you hated yourself for not being able to resist, which only made you crave the sharpness more. You looked at yourself in the bathroom mirror and wondered at how easy it was for everything to fall apart around you. The self-confidence, the security, the life you’d spent years, decades even, building, it all seemed to be crumbling. From one stupid comment.

You held the blade to your arm, a little shaky, knowing that once you did it, you wouldn’t be able to take it back. The line of blood was familiar, almost a relief, the pain an old friend, one that you’d kept away for so, so long. You hated yourself for doing it. You hated yourself for enjoying it. But you enjoyed the hating, too.

So focused were you on the lines, the series of parallels and perpendiculars you were carving lightly into yourself, that you didn’t hear the front door open, didn’t hear Emily call your name, voice dripping with concern having seen the angry message. You didn’t notice her at all until she was at the bathroom door, eyes wide and panicked, frozen. Before you could react, she’d lunged forward, grabbed your hand, and squeezed, forcing you to drop the razor blade. Her voice came to you as if through water, blurry and hazed and distant, as she wrapped your bloody arm in a towel.

“Honey, stop, stop!!” she called, frantic and shaky. “What are you doing!?”

The moment you made eye contact with her–and saw how scared you’d made her–you broke. Tears streamed down your face and you choked back sobs, sinking to the bathroom floor. Emily lowered herself with you, making sure to keep your arm tightly wrapped, caressing your face with her free hand.

“Hey,” she cooed. “It’s okay. What’s going on? Can you tell me? Please talk to me, baby. Please.”

You didn’t answer, couldn’t seem to catch your breath or find your voice. You simply buried your head in the crook of her neck, trying to regain some semblance of security.

Emily rubbed your back, resting her chin on your head. “Is it about the writing on the door?”

You nodded, sucking in a shaky breath.

“I’ll get someone to take care of it, okay? But… honey, why did that make you… why did you want to… hurt yourself?”

“It’s not just the door,” you confided, sniffling. “It’s the phone calls and the emails and the fucking Instagram comments.”

“Wh–?” Emily sounded deeply confused, even as she ran her fingers through your hair, placed kisses at the top of your head.

“I left one comment, Em, on some stupid fucking baseball Pride post to say, like, Happy Pride! Thanks for not being bigots! And all the fucking bigots in DC came out of the woodwork to dox me.”

Emily exhaled, mind racing. First, she had to keep you safe from yourself. Then she needed to keep you and her and your home physically safe. Then she needed to get your digital safety under control. Emily was a fixer at heart. And she was determined to make you feel safe again.

“And why the fuck do they keep bringing up my dad!?” You choked out another sob.

Understanding flooded through Emily, and she held you a little tighter, a little closer. It was your dad. That’s what had really triggered you. You were used to homophobia. But you hated being reminded of your dad. Emily rubbed her thumb along the bloodied towel around your forearm, a realization sinking in, one that broke her heart.

“This isn’t the first time you’ve hurt yourself,” she whispered, more to herself than to you. It devastated her. How could she protect you from yourself? From your past? She couldn’t go back and change it, no matter how desperately she wanted to.

You could hear the heartbreak in her voice, and guilt flooded into all the hurt places inside you, all the places the blood had left empty. You buried your face in your hands.

“I’m sorry, Em,” you cried, shrinking into yourself. “I’m so sorry.”

But the more you tried to squirm away, the harder she held you. “Hey,” she soothed. “It’s okay. I’m sorry. I’m sorry you’ve been through things that make you want to hurt yourself.”

Her voice broke, and you wrapped your arms around her waist, your instinct to comfort her kicking in. She was shaking, you realized. She was scared.

“But, baby, please don’t shut me out,” she continued. “I’ll do whatever it takes, okay? Just… I don’t… I don’t know how to protect you from you.”

You sat up and looked at Emily, her eyes now swimming with tears. “Emily,” you said softly, wiping her eyes with your thumbs. “That’s not your job.”

“It is my job,” she insisted. “It’s always my job to keep you safe.”

You exhaled shakily, lifting your arm to wet a rag at the sink, and handing it to Emily, uncovering the angry red cuts on your arm. You pulled gauze and medical tape out of the bottom cabinet drawer and set those next to you.

“Here,” you said, extending your arm, knowing that Emily would feel better with something tangible to do to help you.

She dabbed at your arm with the rag, her fingers gentle and cool against your skin.

“It’s not something you can fix, Em,” you told her, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear as she focused on your wounds, eyes swimming. “I need to go back to therapy.”

She nodded, deep in thought, smoothing the gauze over your wound, and carefully taping it in place.

“But you could get Penelope to shut down the internet trolls?” you suggested, venturing a smile. Your heart wasn’t in it yet, but you knew that with Emily here, it would be soon.

Emily ran her fingers over your arm, placing a small kiss on the bandages. She smiled at you, sad and determined and angry and scared, and squeezed your hand. “Oh, I will fucking end the trolls. Starting with the asshole who fucked up our door. Bet that idiot’s not expecting the FBI to come knocking.”

You giggled, and she pressed her forehead to yours and, for just a moment, everything was okay.

You knew that Emily couldn’t make you better. She wasn’t magic. And even the best relationships couldn’t take away all the hurt of the past. But Emily made it easier for you to make yourself better. She made you want to do the work. And, for that–and for so many other reasons–you’d love her forever.