Prentissmylove

You see the fine lines at the corners of her eyes as she studies you, and the faint spark in them makes your legs feel unsteady. Your heart beats faster when Emily whispers your name, her breath brushing across your face, making your knees press together without thinking. She looks like she wants to say something, but she holds it back, only tilting her head slightly as she continues to study you.

You don’t see her hand move, and before you can register it, her fingers are already on your cheek. Her fingers trace your skin like they’re testing whether you’re real at all, following your cheekbone, your temple, your jaw. Goosebumps rise instantly across your body, and a sound slips out of you that makes Emily’s eyebrow lift, faintly amused, as if she’s quietly pleased by the reaction she’s getting.

“So responsive to my touch,” she murmurs into your ear, leaning in just a little closer.

Her grey hair brushes your neck, and you catch the scent of her shampoo—lavender, maybe?

When a visible shiver runs through you, Emily steps back just enough to look at you properly again. Her eyes are darker now, her pupils slightly widened. There might even be a hint of gold in them. You try to focus on it, to keep studying her, but when her gaze drops to your mouth, your breath catches for a moment.

Instinctively, you bite your lip, feeling the tension between you stretch further. Emily looks back into your eyes, as if waiting for permission, and leans in. You close your eyes and…

Light filters through unfamiliar curtains in pale, indifferent strips, and for a moment you simply lie there, suspended between the last remnants of the dream and the undeniable reality of the guest room around you. It takes you longer than it should to fully separate the two. When you do, the result is not relief.

You remain in bed for a moment longer, still caught between sleep and waking, but the house is already alive beneath you. Voices drift up from downstairs, muted but steady, and somewhere in the rhythm of it there is the sound of plates being set down, cutlery meeting wood. It reminds you, slowly and without ceremony, that the world has moved on without waiting.

Eventually you push yourself upright. The cold of the morning lingers faintly in the room as you pull yesterday’s sweatshirt over your shoulders, still carrying something of the night in its fabric. In the mirror your hair looks unchanged and slightly unruly, sleep still clinging to you in ways you don’t quite manage to smooth away. You brush your teeth in slow motion, the routine grounding you. Only when you’re already halfway to the door do you pause, reconsider, and return for a small spray of perfume, a quiet, instinctive decision, as if it matters more than it should.

Breakfast is already in motion when you reach the kitchen, as though the house has agreed to continue without you. Coffee fills the air, warm and grounding, cutting through the softer smells of toast and something buttery still on a pan.

Claire is already talking when she properly registers you, mid-sentence, mid-thought, her voice carrying the kind of energy that makes sleep sound optional rather than necessary. She is standing near the counter with a cup in hand, gesturing loosely as she speaks, while someone at the table laughs at something you missed by minutes.

Roy is locked in a quiet, ongoing struggle with the toaster, which has clearly decided to function only when it feels like it, while Judy moves through the space with practiced efficiency, correcting what needs correcting without ever making it feel like correction at all. A plate is shifted here, a chair straightened there, a soft comment that goes unanswered because it doesn’t need one.

And then there is Emily.

She is seated slightly apart from the center of the room, a mug resting between her hands, different from the one she had last night. You notice her before you fully register the rest of the kitchen, as if the room arranges itself around where she sits.

Her posture carries the same quiet composure from yesterday, that steady kind of stillness that doesn’t ask for attention and somehow takes it anyway. Yet this morning there are small differences you catch without meaning to. A few strands of hair have fallen forward, not contained the way they were last night, softening the outline of her face in a way that makes her feel closer and less guarded.

Something about the sight of her shifts something inside you. You can’t quite put your finger on what it is, and decide it’s probably better not to examine it too closely.

Emily lifts her gaze and meets yours without hesitation, as though she had been waiting for you to walk into the kitchen. Almost as though she’d known.

Her dark eyes settle on you and hold, and suddenly looking away feels a lot easier than holding her gaze. It’s ridiculous, but for a second you have the unsettling feeling that she can see straight through you. See the dream. See exactly why you’re avoiding her eyes in the first place.

“Morning,” Claire says brightly, much to your dismay. “You look like you didn’t sleep.”

The question catches you completely off guard, and before you can stop yourself, your mind jumps to the porch. To Emily. To the possibility that Claire noticed more than she should have. You nearly choke on the air you were about to breathe.

“I slept fine,” you reply too quickly, the words arriving before you have time to make them believable. Your fingers curl around the edge of the table.

From the corner of your eye, you catch Emily looking down at your hand. There is something almost knowing in the glance. Then her eyes lift again, finding yours for the briefest moment, and heat rushes straight into your cheeks.

Claire hums, unconvinced, but does not press further, much to your relief. That doesn’t stop you from wondering what she’s thinking and simply choosing not to say.

Someone passes the basket of toast. Roy mutters something under his breath at the toaster that makes Judy roll her eyes. Claire reaches across the table for jam without pausing whatever story she’s currently telling.

The room moves around you in the easy rhythm of people who have done this a thousand times before and somehow all of it feels slightly out of focus. Because every time Emily shifts in her chair, every time she reaches for her coffee, every time her voice slips into the conversation, your attention follows before you can stop it.

She isn’t speaking much, but when she does, everyone listens. Not because she demands it. Somehow the opposite. Emily never seems to compete for attention, yet it finds her anyway.

This morning her voice carries the same calm steadiness from last night, but something has changed. The porch feels far away now. Tucked somewhere between the dark, the fog, and a conversation neither of you has acknowledged since.

Claire, meanwhile, seems to have made it her personal mission to observe you.

“You were up late,” she remarks at one point, far too casually to be innocent.

“I wasn’t,” you answer with a huff.

Claire tilts her head slightly. “You were definitely up.”

“I was asleep.”

“You got up twice.”

The protest dies halfway out of your mouth, because there is no version of this conversation where Claire doesn’t somehow win.

Across the table, you notice Emily glance up despite your determination not to look at her. One eyebrow lifts, and the faint twitch at the corner of her mouth tells you everything you need to know. She’s listening. Closely. She just has the good sense not to get involved. As if she’s quietly entertained by the way Claire has decided to dissect you this morning. Isn’t that supposed to be Emily’s job?

Claire leans back in her chair, entirely too pleased with herself. “You know, you really should stop overthinking things.”

“I am not overthinking anything,” you shoot back.

Claire smiles. “That’s what people who are overthinking things always say.”

You open your mouth to respond, but whatever you might have said is cut cleanly short by the sudden ring of Emily’s phone.

Emily does not react at first, not outwardly. She simply looks at the phone, and in that brief moment something in her expression shifts so completely that it feels like watching a door close without sound. Whatever softness had been present a moment ago is gone before you can even name it, replaced by something sharper, more distant in a way that is not emotional but functional.

When she answers, her voice has already changed.

“Prentiss.”

It is not louder or colder, it is simply no longer personal. The transformation is immediate, almost unsettling in its precision. Where she had been present in the room a moment ago, she is now elsewhere entirely, as if her attention has stepped out of the house before her body has even moved.

“Yes,” she says after a beat. “I understand.” A pause. “How long?”

Another pause, shorter this time, but no less focused. “I’ll be there.”

The call ends as cleanly as it began. Emily stands without hesitation, setting the mug down, already gathering whatever invisible structure she needs to leave. The room seems to adjust around her absence before she has even moved.

“I have to go,” she announces, like you did not hear her saying it.

Judy looks up knowing. “Is everything alright? A case?”

“Yes, it’s a new case,” Emily replies.

Nothing more and yet everything about her now belongs to that answer.

Claire starts to stand, stops halfway, uncertainty flickering across her face. “Emily—”

“I’ll call you,” Emily states, and there is something gentler in it, directed only at Claire for a fraction of a second before it disappears again into professional focus.

“Roy. Judy,” she says, each name spoken with an ease that suggests they have been said a thousand times before and will be said a thousand times again. “Thank you for dinner and breakfast.”

Roy waves it off quickly, as if formality is something he personally refuses to participate in. “You’re always welcome here.”

Judy, however, is moving before the sentence has properly finished, her attention shifting into practical concern with the kind of instinct that leaves no room for argument. “At least take something with you,” she insists, as though leaving the house without provisions were a personal failure on her part rather than a choice Emily is clearly capable of making herself.

“I’m fine,” Emily answers at once, automatic and familiar, but there is a softness at the edge.

Judy hears neither distinction. She is already halfway to ignoring her. Roy pushes himself up with a reluctant sigh that suggests he is being unfairly robbed of breakfast as a concept, and Judy continues her quiet war with the idea that anyone might leave her house unprepared for survival. Claire disappears down the hallway mid-sentence, calling something about shoes and keys that no one answers but everyone seems to understand anyway.

The moment you step into the hallway, the warmth of the kitchen seems to stay behind you. Emily is already dressed. At some point between the phone call and now, she has gathered herself back together. Her bag rests against her shoulder, her jacket sits neatly in place, and there is something strangely final about the sight of it.

As though the woman from the porch had existed only under very specific circumstances. A dark yard. A yellow mug. A few stolen hours in the middle of the night. This version of Emily belongs somewhere else entirely.

Roy continues talking beside her, unwilling to surrender the last few minutes without a fight, while Judy slips something small and carefully wrapped into Emily’s hand.

The gesture is so familiar that neither of them needs to explain it. Judy presses it into her palm and Emily accepts it. There is no protest. No argument. Only a small nod that somehow says more than either of them bothers to put into words.

You wonder how many times this has happened before. How many rushed departures. How many interrupted breakfasts. How many phone calls that turned an ordinary morning into a goodbye. Nobody in the hallway seems surprised by it, because this isn’t unusual. This is simply Emily’s life.

Then, slowly, the hallway settles. Not into silence, but into attention. Emily turns and her gaze finds Judy first.

“Thank you,” she says again, and this time the words are less procedural, softened at the edges in a way that does not ask for anything in return.

Judy reaches out and briefly touches her arm, firm and familiar. “Be safe.”

“I always am,” Emily replies, not as reassurance, but as fact.

Roy steps in next, clapping her shoulder with exaggerated nonchalance that does not fully disguise affection. “Call us when you’re not saving the world.”

A faint curve appears at the corner of her mouth. “I’ll try.”

Claire moves in without hesitation, wrapping her arms around Emily in a brief but certain embrace. For a moment, Emily allows herself to simply be held before returning it, just as briefly, but no less sincerely.

When they separate, Claire doesn’t step back right away. Her hands remain on Emily’s arms for a second longer, her eyes searching Emily’s face as though trying to memorize something she already knows.

“Be careful,” she says quietly.

Emily’s mouth curves, small and familiar. “I will.”

Claire steps back, and Emily’s eyes inevitably find you.

You catch her gaze without questioning it, as if something unspoken pulls it into place and holds it there. For a moment, it feels as though the room has narrowed down to only the two of you.

Emily no longer seems to register what Judy is saying to her, just as you stop hearing Claire’s casual talk about the next family gathering. Only moments ago, Emily had been centered on the room, on the family around her. Now her attention has shifted completely, settling on you with a weight that is impossible to ignore.

You feel it clearly and instead of looking away, you hold it.

She begins to walk toward you slowly, each step even and deliberate, as if she already knows where she is going but is still choosing the exact way to arrive there. When she lifts her hand, there is a brief pause in the air between you, a fraction of hesitation that almost feels like she is searching your face for something that would make her stop.

But she does not find it, because there is nothing in you that wants her to stop.

Only the lingering trace of your dream, the memory of her holding Claire, the wish tob e hold by her. The awareness of how wrong and how inevitable this feeling is all at once.

Your breath catches and you hold it without realizing, until her fingers finally meet your wrist, and only then do you let it out again, audible and unguarded.

Her touch is light, steady. Her thumb moves once. Barely anything. A quiet gesture that does not try to become more than it is, and yet refuses to be less. Still, warmth spreads through you, sharp in its clarity, leaving no room to pretend you are unaffected.

And then, just as quietly, she lets go.

“It was good to meet you,” she murmurs, and there’s a brief glint in her eyes.

You answer, though it comes a little slower than it should. “You too.”

She keeps looking at you for a moment longer, her gaze giving nothing away and yet somehow it feels like it is saying too much. Maybe it is nothing. Maybe you are imagining all of it. Maybe it is just the way you want it to be.

Emily exhales softly, presses her lips together, and reaches for her bag. Her eyes find yours once more, brief and unreadable, before she turns. She walks out into the cool morning air without hesitation, the door closing behind her with quiet finality.

A tightness settles in your chest and you realize, with unsettling clarity, that meeting Claire’s family was never going to be the part you remembered most.