ScorpSik

You turn onto your side. Then onto your back again. At some point you stop pretending you are trying to sleep at all. You throw back the blankets, pull on a sweatshirt and quietly leave the room before you can spend another hour arguing with yourself.

The floor is cold beneath your bare feet as you move through the sleeping house, careful to keep your footsteps quiet. The wooden floor softens each step, muffling the sound of your movements until you come to a stop at the top of the staircase. Maybe a little fresh air will help. Maybe it will be enough to quiet thoughts that refuse to settle. You make your way downstairs and glance around, the darkness of the house unfolding slowly before you.

The hallway is dim, shaped by moonlight that cuts through the windows in long pale strips. The kitchen light is off, and the only sound is the hum of the refrigerator. By the time you step onto the back porch, the cool night air feels like a relief.

Fog hangs low among the trees beyond the yard, blurring their outlines against the darkness, and the scent of damp earth lingers beneath the promise of rain. For a few moments you simply stand there with your hands wrapped around the railing, letting the cold bite at your skin. The quiet feels different outside, broader somehow. Large enough to hold thoughts that had seemed overwhelming upstairs.

You are just beginning to feel your mind settle when the door behind you opens. A soft creak, the quiet turn of a handle. It could be anyone. And yet your mind has already supplied the answer. The fact that you're right makes it worse.

Emily steps onto the porch carrying a yellow mug between both hands, the small light above you catching briefly in the silver threaded through her dark hair before she eases the door shut behind her. When she looks up, her attention settles on you. Surprise flickers briefly across her face before something gentler takes its place.

“So I wasn’t imagining that someone slipped outside after all,” Emily says softly, her voice steady, almost casual, though her gaze lingers on you just a fraction longer than the words themselves would require.

“Was I too loud?” you ask a beat later, brow faintly furrowed as you glance back toward the house.

“The third step from the top creaks.” A trace of amusement touches her voice. “Judy always said she could hear Claire sneaking out because of it.”

Her fingers tighten slightly around the mug. “Now I can confirm it.”

You laugh. “I can believe that.”

The smile that slowly spreads across her face nearly takes your breath away. It is different from the smiles she wore at dinner or in the kitchen. Back then, they rarely lingered. She would smile and, moments later, retreat behind those carefully guarded walls again.

But this smile? This one stays and nests itself somewhere deep in your stomach. It should not be anything special, and yet it changes everything between you. There is a tension in the air now. An attraction so obvious, so impossible to miss, that you cannot imagine making it up. At least, you hope you aren’t.

There is something different about her like this, standing beneath the porch light. Younger, perhaps. Or simply lighter, as though something in her has loosened just enough to let itself be seen. She moves to the railing beside you, close enough that you can feel the shift of air when she passes. She is not touching you, leaving enough space to be polite and somehow not nearly enough space to feel distant.

Your entire body tingles with the awareness of her. Heat gathers beneath your skin, spreading slowly through your chest and shoulders until it feels almost impossible to tell where your own warmth ends and hers begins.

You catch the faint scent of laundry detergent, green tea, and the floral trace of her perfume. It is softer now than it had been at dinner, faded by the passing hours. You don't know why, but that only makes it worse. Familiarity has already begun rooting itself where it has no right to be.

The silence that settles afterward should feel awkward, but it doesn’t. Instead, it feels strangely natural. As though the two of you have done this before. As though standing side by side in comfortable silence is something familiar rather than something entirely new.

There is no pressure to fill the quiet. No urgency to keep conversation moving. Just the steady presence of another person and the unexpected comfort of sharing the same stillness.

The two of you stand side by side, staring out across the yard while fog drifts slowly between the trees. You know the stars are hidden somewhere behind the clouds, and a small part of you aches for them.

Back home, the city swallows most of the night sky. Streetlights and buildings wash everything out until only the brightest stars survive. You have always loved stargazing, always found something comforting in looking up and realizing how small your worries are compared to everything else.

Somewhere in the distance you can hear the call of an an owl. The sound stretches thin through the darkness before fading again, leaving the night untouched behind it.

And still your attention keeps drifting back to the woman beside you. You find yourself noticing the shape of her profile against the darkness. The way her fingers rest around the mug. The rise and fall of her breathing. Small, meaningless details that somehow refuse to feel meaningless at all.

“Couldn’t sleep?” Her voice is quiet, soft enough to blend into the darkness around you, and for a moment it feels less like a question and more like an invitation to say what has been keeping you awake.

You smile faintly to yourself, tip your head back toward the cloud-covered sky, and shake your head. “Apparently not.”

The answer earns a small nod from Emily, and something about the gesture catches your attention. Not because it is remarkable in itself, but because it carries none of the politeness people often fall back on in conversations with near strangers. There is no surprised laugh, no reassuring comment about jet lag or unfamiliar beds. Just simple understanding, as though sleeplessness is a language she knows fluently enough not to require explanation.

And somehow that feels more intimate than sympathy ever could. Emily doesn’t ask you to explain yourself. She doesn’t offer solutions. She simply accepts the answer for what it is, as though she understands exactly what it means to lie awake with a mind that refuses to quiet down.

Claire has mentioned it before, of course. The sleepless nights. The impossible work schedule. Over the years, stories about Emily have accumulated, woven into late-night conversations, shared meals, and the endless small moments that make up a friendship. You know about the travel schedules that never seem to make sense, the phone calls answered at impossible hours, the tendency to disappear into work for days at a time.

You know enough to understand that sleep and Emily Prentiss have never been especially reliable companions.

The porch light doesn’t quite reach where she’s standing, leaving part of her face softened by shadow, but it does little to hide the exhaustion that lingers beneath her composure. She is good at hiding it. Claire has told you that often enough over the years. Good at functioning when most people would have stopped long ago, good at adjusting her posture, her expression, even her voice until nobody thinks to ask whether she is tired. It is a kind of discipline you have never fully understood, the ability to keep moving simply because stopping has never really been an option.

But standing here now, you can see the cracks in it. The faint shadows beneath her eyes. The way her fingers tighten around the mug every now and then, as though she is holding on to the warmth without realizing it. Small things. The sort of details most people would never notice. The sort of details that suddenly feel impossible to ignore.

“You couldn’t sleep either?” you finally ask.

A soft exhale leaves her as she keeps her gaze fixed on the cloud-covered sky.

The answer comes as nothing more than the slightest nod. You wait for something else. An explanation. A joke. Anything. None of it comes.

Emily keeps her eyes on the cloud-covered sky, her fingers curled around the mug, and for reasons you can’t quite explain, that feels far more revealing than words would have.

The longer you watch her, the more aware you become of how little she actually gives away. Not because she seems distant. If anything, she feels closer out here than she has all evening. But there are parts of her that never quite reach the surface, thoughts that seem to linger somewhere behind her eyes before she decides whether to let them go.

The tension in her jaw catches your attention. The careful neutrality of her expression. Whatever keeps her awake tonight, she carries it quietly.

“Nightmares?” The question slippes out before you can stop it.

For a second you regret asking. Regret follows almost instantly, not because of her reaction, but because of the word itself. It feels wrong the moment it leaves your mouth, heavier than you intended, carrying a weight neither of you had acknowledged until now. You barely know her. Whatever keeps Emily Prentiss awake at night belongs on the other side of a boundary you have no right to cross, and as the silence stretches between you, your whole body seems to tense in anticipation of having crossed it anyway.

You expect her to deflect. To laugh softly and change the subject. To pretend she does not know what you mean.

Instead, she turns toward you. The answer is there before she even speaks. Not in her expression. Not in anything obvious. Just in the simple fact that she considers the question rather than avoiding it. Something in your chest loosens and tightens at the same time.

“Sometimes. But not today,” she whispers, her voice carrying a softness that feels almost startling against everything you know about her.

The answer lingers between you, not because of what she admits, but because she admits it at all. She could have let the question pass unanswered. Could have hidden behind a joke or a polite deflection. Instead, she meets it head-on and hands you a truth so small it should hardly matter, yet somehow it feels like far more than that.

You find yourself looking back toward the trees, tracing their blurred outlines through the fog while your mind remains hopelessly occupied with the woman standing beside you.

Claire has spent years talking about Emily’s work with a mixture of admiration and concern, proud of her in the way only family can be while simultaneously wishing she carried a little less of the world on her shoulders. You remember stories about cases that lasted months, about flights taken at a moment’s notice, about serial killers and crime scenes and the endless darkness that seems to follow people in Emily’s line of work.

You wonder what happens to all of it afterward. Whether it stays neatly contained inside reports and evidence boxes, or whether some of it follows her home anyway, settling into your dreams and refusing to leave. The mere thought of her having nightmares, of all that darkness catching up to her in the night, makes nausea rise in you. You would want to take it from her, and you know even as you think it that the idea is ridiculous. How would you possibly take something like that from her? You barely know her…

Maybe that is what shifts something in you without fully forming into a decision. Not a plan, not even a thought you can properly name, just a faint instinct to pull the conversation away from anything that might make her look even more distant than she already does out here in the dark. “Claire adores you.”

Her reaction is priceless. The smile that appears feels different from the ones you’ve seen throughout the evening. It softens something in her expression, reaching her eyes before she can stop it, and for a moment you catch a glimpse of the woman Claire has spent five years describing. Not the Unit Chief. Not the profiler. Not the woman who chases monsters across the country. Just Emily.

“I adore her too.” The answer comes without hesitation, without thought. As instinctive as breathing.

And suddenly you understand something that has always been difficult to put into words whenever Claire talks about her. It isn’t admiration that lives beneath all those stories. At least not entirely. It’s trust. The kind that forms slowly over years and survives every disappointment life throws at it. The certainty that no matter how chaotic things become, Emily will show up when it matters.

“I figured.” You fold your hands and let them hang loosely over the railing of the terrace.

A quiet laugh escapes her. “God, she was impossible as a kid.”

The affection threaded through the complaint undercuts any attempt at seriousness, and you find yourself smiling before she finishes.

“When she was six, she informed me that I was moving into her treehouse.”

The image appears in your mind with startling clarity. Claire, six years old, stubborn enough to challenge gravity if it inconvenienced her. Emily, younger but undoubtedly just as composed, being ordered into a treehouse as though negotiations had already concluded.

“Informed?”

Emily glances toward you, one eyebrow lifting. “I wasn’t consulted.”

The deadpan delivery earns a reaction from you that slips out before you can stop it: a short, unguarded laugh that surprises even yourself, and for a moment the years separating the story from the present seem to vanish entirely.

“I spent three hours up there discussing my new living arrangement.”

“Three hours?” you ask, disbelief breaking through your voice.

“She refused to come down until I agreed, and it was already late, Judy was worried sick.”

You shake your head, still laughing.

“That is the most Claire thing I’ve ever heard.”

“It really is.”

The conversation drifts naturally from there, winding through stories and memories until it becomes difficult to tell where one ends and the next begins. Sometimes Emily talks. Sometimes you do. Occasionally one of you falls quiet while the other follows the movement of the night life around the house as it continues without needing either of you to participate in it. The pauses never feel awkward, only inhabited, as if silence itself has taken on shape between you.

The ease of it catches you off guard. You’ve known Emily for less than a day. By every reasonable standard, this should feel different. More cautious. More formal. Yet standing here somehow feels simpler than conversations you’ve had with people you’ve known for years.

The realization is dangerous enough that you look away from her. Unfortunately, looking away solves absolutely nothing.

You remain acutely aware of her presence beside you. Of the low cadence of her voice whenever she speaks. Of the warmth that still seems to linger in your memory from that brief accidental touch at dinner. The recollection resurfaces with irritating ease, dragging your thoughts directly back to the bread basket, to Emily’s hesitation, to the impossible possibility that she might have felt something too. Or to the moment earlier, when she had, almost instinctively, used your presence as an anchor without even seeming to notice it herself.

You exhale sharply through your nose.

Beside you, Emily’s mouth curves. “You look like you’re losing an argument.”

A faint, involuntary lift of your shoulders betrays you before you can stop it, something between disbelief and reluctant amusement moving through you at the same time. Of course she notices. The embarrassing part isn’t that she’s observant, it’s that she always seems to be observant in your direction first, as if you were easier to read than you have any right to be.

“Maybe I am.”

She studies you for a second. “Are you winning?”

The question sounds harmless, but you know it isn’t. Not when your mind supplies the actual argument. Not when you already know the answer.

“No.”

Emily laughs quietly, and the sound settles somewhere warm beneath your skin.

Emily laughs quietly, and the sound settles somewhere warm beneath your skin.

The ease between you returns so naturally that it feels less like something being restored and more like slipping back into a rhythm neither of you had realized you were already following. At some point, without a clear beginning to it, you notice she keeps looking at you. Not constantly. Not openly. Just often enough that every time your eyes meet, something in you sharpens, as if the world briefly adjusts its focus.

It stops being about attraction as an idea and starts becoming something harder to ignore in real time. And the unsettling part is not what you feel, but the slow suspicion that she might be moving through the same awareness.

The thought arrives fully formed and still makes no sense. Emily is older. Claire’s godmother. Someone you have known for less than a day. None of it fits, none of it should carry weight, and yet it does in a way you cannot fully interrupt. And still, when your eyes meet again, neither of you looks away.

Your attention catches on small, involuntary details before you can stop it. The way her throat moves when she swallows. The brief touch of her tongue against her lips. The blue of her sweater sitting softer in the low light than it should feel reasonable to notice, the fabric falling in a way that makes everything feel too immediate to be ignored. And then, just as uninvited, you register her attention on you the same way. Her eyes settle on your hands, linger there a fraction too long, then lift again, as if she is also aware of the exact moment she is looking too closely.

The moment holds without asking anything of either of you, but it also does not give either of you anywhere to retreat into. Just awareness, sustained and uncomfortably mutual.

Emily is the first to look away. Later, she glances back toward the house, and when she speaks again, her voice has shifted into something more grounded, as if she is stepping back into a version of herself that is easier to manage.

“You should probably try sleeping again.”

You hear her exhale softly and can’t help the faint smile that follows. “There it is.”

One eyebrow lifts. “What?”

“The part where you’re trying to get rid of me again.”

Her laugh is warm enough to make the joke worthwhile. “I’m not getting rid of you.” The denial would be more convincing if her eyes weren’t smiling too. Then her gaze flicks briefly over your sweatshirt before returning to your face. “It’s cold.”

You glance down at her words. The sweatshirt is thick enough to survive a small apocalypse, and judging by the faint amusement lingering around Emily’s mouth, she knows that just as well as you do. Neither of you points it out. There is no need to.

And still, it doesn’t land the way it’s meant to.

A moment later she pushes away from the railing and turns toward the door. You think that’s where it ends, the conversation, the closeness, everything settling back into distance. But when she moves past you, it doesn’t feel like distance at all. She’s closer than she should be. Close enough that your awareness sharpens, as if the air between you changes before either of you does.

She lifts her hand, and for a moment there’s a pause in her, something that doesn’t fully resolve into movement. Before she can rethink it, her fingers brush your upper arm, then stay there just long enough that it stops feeling accidental. A second contact follows at your shoulder, lighter, but no less deliberate.

It is a touch so controlled it almost passes for nothing at all, and yet it lands with more intention than either of you acknowledge. It’s gone again before you can hold onto it but your skin still remembers it.

Something tightens in her expression, small, restrained, but seconds later contained again, as if she has already decided she shouldn’t have done it and is forcing herself not to show it. Then she lets go.

“Goodnight, Y/N.”

The sound of your name in her voice sends a shiver through you before you even register it, and for a second you forget to breathe, as though any movement might break whatever this is between you.

“Goodnight, Emily.”

The door closes quietly behind her, leaving you alone with the fog, the darkness, and thoughts that have become infinitely more complicated than they were an hour ago. You had come out here to clear your head, not to get pulled deeper into something that already feels harder to untangle than it should.

Long after she disappears inside, you remain at the railing staring into the night, trying very hard not to think about her. But that doesn’t really work, because she is already everywhere in your thoughts, settled in places you can’t quite push her out of anymore.

You smile into your glass, listening as the argument dissolves into three different conversations at once. Claire sides with her mother and Jonathan, currently balanced on a video call between the salt and pepper shakers, contributes entirely unhelpful commentary from several states away.

“I still have the pictures.”

“Delete them.”

“Never.”

Dinner blurs pleasantly at the edges after a while, conversations overlapping so completely that it becomes impossible to tell where one story ends and another begins. Claire’s family talks the way people do when they’ve known each other forever, interrupting without apologizing, arguing without offending, slipping seamlessly between teasing and genuine affection.

Somewhere to your left, Roy is halfway through a story that seems to involve a broken lawnmower. Across from him, Judy is already preparing to correct whatever version of events he’s currently inventing. Claire keeps laughing before anyone reaches the punchline, mostly because she’s heard these stories often enough to know exactly where they’re going.

You try to focus on them. You really do. But every few minutes, your attention drifts toward Emily.

She sits several seats away, one arm draped casually across the back of her chair, looking entirely at ease despite somehow commanding more of the room than anyone else at the table. You find yourself watching details you should not be paying attention to. The pronounced veins along the back of her hand whenever her fingers tighten briefly around the wood of the chair. The way they shift beneath her skin when she reaches for her wine glass. The faint shadows that appear in her cheeks whenever a real smile catches her off guard.

The dimples are unfair. Everything about her is unfair, actually. You’ve known her for barely three hours, and you’ve already arrived at one deeply unfortunate conclusion.

You are utterly fucked. The realization settles somewhere beneath your ribs with all the grace of a falling piano.

You drag your attention back toward Roy’s story, determined to behave like a functional human being for at least five consecutive minutes. It lasts approximately thirty seconds before your focus slips again.

Because somehow Emily remains impossible to ignore. What catches you most is her voice. Low and assured, threaded with the kind of confidence that never feels performative. There is authority in it, but not the kind people force into a room. The kind that settles naturally into place because everyone around her trusts it. And then there’s the way she listens. Really listens.

Most people spend conversations waiting for their turn to talk. Emily doesn’t. When someone speaks, her attention settles fully on them, curious and unhurried. She isn’t looking for an opportunity to take control of the discussion. She isn’t waiting to redirect it back toward herself. She seems genuinely interested in what other people have to say.

The realization is oddly captivating and apparently distracting. Because sometime during your observation, Emily’s gaze lifts from the conversation and drifts in your direction.

For a brief, terrible second, you have the uncomfortable suspicion that she has caught you staring. Heat crawls up the back of your neck. You look away before you can confirm it, abandoning the thought entirely and forcing your attention back toward whatever story Claire’s parents are currently arguing about.

“That is not how that happened,” Judy cuts in from the other end of the table.

Roy points his fork at her. “It is exactly how it happened.”

“You left out the part where the fire department arrived.”

“That feels like an unnecessary detail.”

“The fire department showing up is never an unnecessary detail.”

“I disagree.”

Laughter ripples around the table, overlapping from every direction. Even Emily finally gives in, lowering her head slightly with a quiet shake of amusement before reaching for her wine glass. The movement draws your attention instantly, and when she glances up a moment later, you have the distinct suspicion that she catches you looking.

Which, unfortunately, does absolutely nothing to improve your situation.

You risk another glance towards her, marveling about the fact how the silver woven through her dark hair catches the warm kitchen light whenever she turns her head, softer and more noticeable up close than Claire’s stories ever suggested. It doesn’t age her. If anything, it only makes her more striking. More certain of herself.

Across the table, Jonathan says something through the speakerphone that earns a groan from Claire.

“I can still hear you, you know.”

“That was the point,” Jonathan replies.

Laughter ripples around the table, overlapping with three other conversations already in progress, and for a while it becomes easier to focus on that than on the woman sitting a few seats away. Claire launches into a dramatic argument about respect and betrayal. Roy contributes something entirely unhelpful. Judy rolls her eyes in the long-suffering way of someone who has watched this exact conversation happen before.

For a few minutes, it works. You laugh when everyone else laughs. You answer questions when they are directed at you. You let yourself get pulled back into the easy chaos of the evening. And then, without really meaning to, you glance up. Emily is already looking at you.

The moment is so brief that it could easily be coincidence. In fact, that is exactly what you tell yourself as her attention shifts naturally back toward whoever is speaking. The conversation never stumbles. Nothing changes. Yet something about it lingers, settling somewhere inconveniently beneath your ribs.

“Wait, you did what?” Roy asks as you finish the story.

Heat immediately rises to your face. “It wasn’t that dramatic.”

“You got locked in a library overnight.” Claire deadpans.

“Okay, when you say it like that—”

Questions arrive from every direction at once, some directed at you, some directed at each other. Apparently everyone has decided your accidental imprisonment requires further investigation.

“Did nobody notice?”

“How does that even happen?”

“An entire night?”

Jonathan’s voice crackles through the speaker. “I feel like we’re skipping over some important decision-making processes here.”

You groan. “There were no decision-making processes.”

“That somehow makes it worse,” Judy informs you.

The laughter that follows leaves your face warm for reasons that have very little to do with embarrassment. You drop your gaze briefly, shaking your head, and when you look up again your attention finds Emily before you can stop it.

She hasn’t said a word, and that might be part of the problem.

There is a smile resting at the corner of her mouth, small enough that most people probably wouldn’t notice it. She looks entertained, quietly so, the way someone does when they are enjoying a moment rather than trying to become the center of it. And once again, you have the distinctly unsettling impression that she has been paying attention the entire time.

Not just to the conversation. To you.

The thought is ridiculous, but that doesn’t stop it from returning. Because it keeps happening. Not often enough to be obvious. Not long enough to mean anything. Yet every now and then, in the middle of a story or while someone else is speaking, you look up and find Emily’s gaze already resting in your direction.

Never staring or lingering long enough to call attention to itself. Just long enough to leave you wondering whether you imagined it.

And every time it happens, awareness follows close behind. Awareness of the way your fingers tighten around your wine glass. Awareness of your posture. Awareness of how loudly you are laughing or whether you are speaking too quickly. The kind of self-consciousness that arrives without invitation and refuses to leave once it has settled in.

The profiler, you suppose.

Claire has spent years telling stories about Emily’s ability to read people. Profiling is her job. Observing details other people miss is practically second nature to her. There is nothing remarkable about the fact that she pays attention.

That explanation should be reassuring.

Instead, it only leaves you wondering what exactly she sees when she looks at you, and why some reckless, deeply unhelpful part of you keeps hoping she’ll do it again.

The question follows you through the remainder of dinner, threading itself quietly through every conversation until it becomes difficult to tell whether you are paying attention to what is being said or simply waiting for another glimpse of her attention.

By the time dinner shifts toward careers and future plans, you find yourself far more aware of Emily’s attention than is probably healthy. Unluckily for you, Claire chooses that exact moment to become your least favorite person at the table.

“Oh, don’t let her undersell herself,” she says when someone asks about your studies. “She’s at the top of her program.”

You groan before she can continue, already knowing there is absolutely no chance she intends to stop there.

“Claire.”

“No, because you’re going to pretend none of this is impressive.”

“Claire.” You try again.

“She’s presenting research next semester.”

“Claire!”

Roy laughs into his drink, and Judy looks delighted. Jonathan, still visible on the tablet screen propped against the centerpiece, looks as though he’s enjoying your suffering far too much.

The conversation spirals beyond your control and every attempt to interrupt only seems to encourage Claire further, and judging by the amusement spreading around the table, nobody has any intention of helping you.

You should probably be paying attention to the increasingly exaggerated version of your academic achievements. Instead, your attention drifts elsewhere or perhaps drifts isn’t the right word. Because there is nothing accidental about the way your gaze keeps returning to Emily.

The dimples that appear whenever she finally lets herself laugh. The faint lines beside her eyes. The way amusement softens her features without diminishing any of the confidence that seems woven into her as naturally as breathing.

Most people ask questions because conversation demands it. A polite question, a polite answer, and then everyone moves on. Emily doesn’t seem particularly interested in politeness. She listens instead. Really listens.

And somehow, that turns out to be far more dangerous.

Emily never interrupts. Never rushes to fill a silence simply because one appears. When she asks something, she waits for the answer as though it matters. As though she isn’t already thinking about what she wants to say next.

Claire mentions your program again before you can stop her, earning an immediate sigh from your side of the table, but Emily doesn't ask the questions you expect.

She doesn't ask what classes you're taking. Or what your grades look like. Or where you plan to end up after graduation. Instead, she tilts her head slightly and asks, “Do you enjoy it?”

The question catches you off guard. Most people want to know what you’re studying. Very few seem interested in whether you actually enjoy any of it. “My degree?”

A faint smile touches her mouth. “Yes. Your degree.”

For a moment, the easy answer sits right there. Close enough to reach for. The kind of answer people accept without asking anything further. But something about Emily’s attention makes it difficult to settle for that. “Most days.”

One of her eyebrows lifts slightly. “Most days?”

“There are days when I love it,” you explain. “And days when I spend six hours reading academic articles and start wondering if dropping out and opening a bookstore would make me happier.”

A quiet laugh escapes her. “That's probably the most honest answer I've heard all week.”

“Ask better questions.”

The words leave your mouth before you have the chance to examine them. For a brief moment, you wonder whether that was a terrible idea.

Emily’s smile answers the question before the thought has time to settle. Something in your chest loosens without permission, maybe because she laughed and didn't look offended. Maybe because making Emily Prentiss laugh is becoming far more satisfying than it has any right to be.

Dinner continues around you without slowing for either of you. Roy and Jonathan have found their way back to football despite everyone at the table collectively deciding to stop talking about it at least three times already. Claire keeps contributing with the confidence of someone who understands neither side and intends to win anyway. Judy looks one comment away from revoking everyone’s speaking privileges.

“So what keeps you from opening the bookstore?” Emily asks.

You smile into your wine glass. “Student loans.”

“That'll do it.” The corner of her mouth shifts again, small and fleeting, but your attention catches on it anyway.

“Also I genuinely like what I study.” You add with a shrug.

“Even after six hours of academic articles?” There is a teasing note in her voice now. Subtle enough that you almost miss it. Almost.

“Ask me again during finals.”

The smile returns, and before you can stop yourself, you find yourself wondering what will make it appear again. The realization arrives quietly: you are enjoying this.

Not because Emily is paying attention to you, because talking to her feels different from talking to almost anyone else. Nothing about the conversation feels rushed. Topics don’t change so much as unfold into one another. One answer becomes another question. One thought leads somewhere neither of you seemed to be aiming for when the discussion began.

At some point, the original subject disappears entirely. Neither of you seems interested in going back for it. Research becomes ambition. Ambition becomes expectation. Expectations become all the strange ways people measure themselves against lives they haven’t lived yet.

You lose track of how you got there, because Emily has a way of making it feel as though every topic was always connected to the next. And somewhere along the way, you stop thinking about what to say before you say it. You simply answer.

“You know,” Emily says eventually, slowly turning her wine glass between her fingers, “most people spend a lot of time trying to sound impressive.”

The observation drifts into the space between you so casually that it takes a second to realize she is talking to you.

You glance up. “And?”

“And you keep trying to downplay everything.”

Heat threatens to creep into your cheeks. “Maybe I just don't like talking about myself.”

Her gaze lingers on you for a moment. “Or maybe you're uncomfortable being good at something.”

There is no softness in the way she says it, but also no push. Just a kind of quiet certainty that makes it difficult to turn the sentence into a joke. The observation lands far too close to the truth. For a second, you have the uncomfortable feeling of being seen. Not analyzed. Really seen.

Before you can decide how to respond, Claire points across the table with unnecessary confidence.

“See? This is exactly what I was talking about. Emily does this thing. She just…” Claire gestures vaguely in Emily’s direction, as if that explains everything.

The conversation tilts slightly out of your control again, pulled sideways by Claire’s certainty.

You let out a breath you didn’t realize you were holding. “Of course she does,” you murmur, more to yourself than to anyone else, already wishing you hadn’t said it out loud.

A quiet sound slips from Emily then, half laugh, half exhale, as if the whole accusation barely weighs anything to her at all. She doesn’t even look offended. If anything, she looks mildly entertained.

“Isn’t that kind of my job?” she comments, tone light, almost absent-minded, already reaching for her glass again.

Claire rolls her eyes. “That is not what I meant.”

“Sure it is,” Emily replies, amusement flickering across her expression before she lets the moment drop entirely.

You hesitate for a second, then tilt your head slightly. “So what exactly is it that you’re reading right now?” you ask, quieter than intended, more curious than you probably should be.

The question lands somewhere between conversation and challenge. Emily’s gaze flicks back to you.

“Right now?” she echoes, as if considering it.

And then, almost at the same time, it happens without planning on either side of the table. The bread basket is moved again, someone passes it down, or shifts it forward and when both of you reach for it at the same time, there is no hesitation in the movement.

Your fingers brush hers and the interruption is so small it shouldn't matter. A simple accident. The kind of thing that happens dozens of times during any shared meal. Your answer dissolves somewhere between thought and speech. The contact lasts no more than a second, barely long enough to register consciously, and yet warmth blooms beneath your skin with startling immediacy. It isn't the touch itself that catches you off guard so much as your reaction to it, the sudden awareness of her that seems to sharpen rather than fade.

For the briefest moment, neither of you moves. The bread basket remains suspended awkwardly between you, forgotten entirely, and you find yourself absurdly aware of every point of contact. The warmth of her fingertips. The rough weave of the tablecloth beneath your wrist. The low murmur of conversation continuing around you as though nothing at all has happened.

Somewhere beside you, Claire is still talking. Roy laughs at something Jonathan says. Cutlery clinks softly against ceramic plates. Life continues exactly as it should.

A quiet breath leaves you before you can stop it, and Emily's eyes lift to yours. This time, you catch it happening rather than simply noticing it afterward. The look is long enough for something low in your stomach to tighten. Long enough for you to notice the hesitation that follows.

Emily’s expression doesn’t change much. Someone less attentive probably wouldn’t notice anything at all. But you've spent most of the evening watching her.

You've watched the way she listens, the way she smiles, the subtle shifts in her expression when she's amused or thoughtful. You recognize composure when you see it. Which is precisely why the faint crack in it catches your attention so quickly.

It isn't dramatic. Emily doesn't pull away as though burned, nor does she stare. The reaction is far smaller than that. A fraction of a pause. The slightest tightening at the corner of her mouth. A flicker of something unguarded passing through her eyes before years of practiced control smooth it away again.

And for the first time all evening, you have the unsettling impression that Emily Prentiss is just as aware of you as you are of her. This isn't the look of a profiler observing a stranger, it feels personal or perhaps you only want it to.

The distinction becomes increasingly difficult to make when she finally withdraws her hand, her gaze lingering on yours before she looks away.

She draws a quiet breath through her nose, almost like she is resetting herself, and then gently lets the moment fall back into the noise of the table. For a second she doesn’t speak, just folds back into the rhythm of the conversation as if stepping over an invisible line she had briefly crossed.

“Sorry,” she murmurs, low and a little belated, not quite an apology for the contact itself, more for the pause it caused. A word that feels more procedural than emotional, as if she is closing a file rather than acknowledging an incident.

A beat passes before she continues, and when she does, her voice is already steadier again. “Right—what was your question again?”

It takes you a second to realize she is talking to you.

You blink, still slightly behind the moment. “I—uh,” you start, and only then remember what you had asked before everything shifted. “It was about how you…how you actually read people like that. In conversation.”

Emily’s gaze settles on you again, but this time it is different. She leans back slightly in her chair, one hand returning to her glass, as if the movement gives her a moment to think without it looking like hesitation. “It’s not really something I switch on,” she begins. “It’s mostly just… listening. People tell you a lot more than they think they do.”

A small pause, then a faint, almost amused exhale.

“And most of the time,” she adds, eyes briefly flicking toward you again, “they don’t realize they’ve already answered the question.”

“That sounds… unfairly useful,” you say, trying for lightness, arriving half a beat too late to fully hide the curiosity underneath it, but not correcting it either.

Something small shifts in Emily’s expression at that, nothing obvious, just the faintest lift at the corner of her mouth again, but she doesn’t respond directly. Instead, she lets the moment settle and simply nods once, as if accepting your answer to her answer.

Claire, of course, fills the space before it can stretch any further. “Unfairly useful is basically her entire personality,” she announces, far too pleased with herself.

Roy lets out a short laugh from somewhere down the table. “That’s generous,” he adds, already reaching for another plate.

The conversation folds back in on itself from there, the way it does when everyone knows each other too well to leave silences alone for long. Someone brings up a story from years ago that nobody fully agrees on anymore. Claire corrects at least three details that no one asked for. Emily listens again, but differently now, less focused on you, more naturally absorbed back into the rhythm of the table.

You try to follow it. You do. And for a while it works, in the way that being included in noise always works. Still, every now and then, your attention drifts back to her without permission.

By the time dessert is served, you’ve almost convinced yourself that you’re imagining things. By the time empty plates are being gathered and carried toward the kitchen, you’ve nearly talked yourself back into reason.

Nearly.

The dining room dissolves into the comfortable chaos that follows a good meal. Chairs scrape softly against the hardwood floor as people begin pushing back from the table. Roy is already collecting empty glasses before anyone can stop him, while Claire appoints herself supervisor of an operation nobody has actually asked her to supervise.

"I'm delegating," she insists when Jonathan points this out.

"You're pointing at people and giving orders," Jonathan replies.

"Exactly."

The exchange earns a chorus of groans around the table, and before you realize it, you're smiling again.

You push back your chair and rise to your feet, unsuccessfully suppressing a yawn as you reach for a stack of plates. The long day of travel is beginning to catch up with you, your limbs pleasantly heavy beneath the warmth of the house.

That’s when Emily passes behind your chair. The space is narrow, there is nothing unusual about it. People move around one another all the time. And yet her shoulder brushes yours lightly as she passes, so lightly it almost feels like it could be imagined if you weren’t already paying attention to her. The contact is brief enough that you might have ignored it entirely if your awareness of her wasn’t already stretched unbearably thin.

She pauses a fraction longer than necessary and then, her fingers briefly find your wrist as she steadies herself while reaching past you for a glass, an incidental contact in every practical sense, except that she doesn’t let go immediately.

It is not a grip. Not even close. But it is also not nothing.

You glance up and see how Emily pauses. Only for a moment, but long enough for a small smile to touch the corner of her mouth.

“You should probably get some sleep.”

The comment catches you off guard, not because of the words themselves. Because it is direct in a way she hasn’t been all evening with anyone else.

“You trying to get rid of me already?” The joke comes easier than expected.

Emily’s eyes soften slightly. “Not at all.” Her gaze flicks toward the darkened windows overlooking the backyard before returning to you. “You've been traveling all day.”

Her hand is still close enough that you are suddenly, inconveniently aware of the absence when she finally lets go.

"I'll help clean up first, then I'll go to bed," you reply, gathering the plates in front of you despite the fact that another yawn threatens to escape.

Emily's mouth twitches with amusement, as though she doesn't believe you for a second.

Before she can answer, Judy appears beside you and gently plucks the stack of dishes from your hands. "Absolutely not."

"Judy—"

"You are a guest," she informs you firmly, already turning toward the kitchen. "I've spent the entire evening hearing how exhausted you must be after your flight. The least you can do is let us spoil you a little."

"Mom says that every time somebody tries to help," Claire warns from across the room.

"Because every time somebody tries to help, they put things in the wrong cabinets," Judy calls back without missing a beat.

Laughter ripples through the room. You glance toward Emily just in time to catch the fond amusement in her expression. She gives a small shake of her head before stepping forward and effortlessly rescuing another stack of dishes from Roy's hands.

"You heard the woman," she says.

Roy immediately lifts both hands in surrender. "I've learned not to argue."

The smile Emily sends in your direction is brief, but it lingers with you all the same.