Emily Prentiss One Shots

Different Distance

this one came from a place of real longing. not the sad kind, but the kind that makes you understand what you actually want. after my own breakup, i found myself thinking a lot about the small, specific things: making coffee for two, reaching for someone in the dark. the way love isn't just the big moments but the quiet ones. the way sharing a space with someone changes everything.

i wanted to write about that ache, but also about what it means to choose to be vulnerable with someone. to say "i miss you" and have them actually hear it. to let yourself need someone without apologizing for it.

The apartment had never felt so empty.

You stood in the doorway of the bedroom, staring at the perfectly made bed, Emily's side still tucked in exactly as you'd left it five days ago. The morning light filtered through the curtains, casting soft shadows across the duvet, and you felt that familiar ache settle deep in your chest.

This was supposed to get easier. That's what you'd told yourself when you'd moved in three months ago, when Emily had helped you carry boxes up the stairs, when you'd laughed together trying to figure out where all your books would fit alongside hers. Living together was supposed to make things better, simpler. You'd have a home base together, a shared space that was yours and hers, a place where you both belonged.

But nobody had warned you about this part.

Nobody had told you that living together would make her absence feel so much more profound. That you'd wake up reaching for her and find only cold sheets. That you'd make coffee for two out of habit and then stare at the extra mug like it had personally betrayed you. That the silence in the apartment would feel so loud it made your ears ring.

Before you'd moved in, Emily being away on cases had been normal. Expected. You'd had your own apartment, your own routine, your own life that continued whether she was there or not. You'd miss her, of course, god you'd miss her, but there was a certain distance to it. She'd text you updates when she could, call you late at night from some hotel room in a city you'd never been to, and you'd fall asleep to the sound of her voice promising she'd be home soon.

But now? Now you came home to the apartment you shared, and everywhere you looked there were reminders of her. Her jacket draped over the back of the chair. Her books on the nightstand. The coffee mug she'd used the morning before she left, still sitting in the dish rack because you couldn't bring yourself to put it away. The faint scent of her perfume lingering in the bathroom.

You were surrounded by Emily, and yet she wasn't here.

The bed was the worst part. You'd gotten used to sleeping next to her, to the warmth of her body beside you, the steady rhythm of her breathing, the way she'd unconsciously reach for you in the middle of the night. Now the bed felt too big, too cold, too empty. You'd tried sleeping on your side, on her side, diagonally across the middle, nothing felt right. Nothing filled the Emily-shaped absence that seemed to permeate every inch of the mattress.