Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It’s not that she isn’t happy for her mother. She is. 

James is good for Elizabeth, an old flame from their Georgetown days. Before Richard Prentiss. Before Emily. He’s a no-nonsense man, a requirement in order to match wits with the Ambassador, but his default is steady and silent, and Emily idly thinks it’s why the two of them work so well together. He is perfectly content letting Elizabeth take the reins, but also knows when and how to counsel her to a compromise in private. 

Emily likes James. In many ways, he has helped rekindle her relationship with her mother by providing a novel reason for making the time. She isn’t needing a father figure to step in—Dave has filled that role in recent years, a relationship she treasures—but she also knows that James wouldn’t be averse to the idea if she were to broach it on her own terms.

So, when James proposes and Elizabeth says yes, Emily is thrilled.

Until she realizes that attending their wedding without a date is simply not an option.

She can appreciate that Elizabeth has been making a concerted effort not to make comments about her love life or biological clock; they’d had to have a ground-rules conversation about that one when they started spending time together again. But the one comment that she does let slip during a dress fitting—honestly, Em dear, when the attention isn’t on me, it’ll be on you, not James—sets Emily’s head spinning.

All things considered, the wedding is going to be a tame affair: Elizabeth has eschewed wearing white in favor of baby blue, the embassy is a more than satisfactory venue, and aside from a few obligatory political invitations, the reception will mostly be for family and friends. 

If anything, though, the intimate nature of the event makes Emily all the more nervous. If it were simply about wowing a crowd of haughty, distinguished guests, she’d likely be ringing in a favor with Dave right about now. But she needs nuance instead: someone neither arbitrary nor anonymous, with a knowledge of her family but built-in discretion. Someone with the ability to charm, but whose presence is steady and grounding. Someone who is both a buoy and an escape.

There is only one person who fits that brief.

*

He says yes, of course.

It’s a no-brainer, really. Jessica has offered to watch Jack and, well, he enjoys spending time with Emily. She has been invaluable company in the wake of Haley’s death, keeping him in one piece for Jack—and for himself. She planted her feet firmly in the wreckage of his life when no one else dared to even toe the line, and she helped pull him out, one cup of coffee, one hand squeeze, one have you eaten anything today?, one that’s what I thought, I’m coming over at a time.

He thinks they could be something more. Actually, he’s certain of it. Every once in a while, he entertains fantasies of taking the plunge, telling her how much he values her, how he instinctively looks for her on and off the field and only feels better when she’s in his sights. But the words die on his tongue each time, because she deserves better than him and his baggage, his scars and night terrors.

Even though the baggage feels lighter when she’s around. Even though the scars on his mind fade at her coaxing. Even though the nightmares are rarest on the days she comes over with dinner.

He just…doesn’t want to push her. He doesn’t want to screw anything up, would rather cling to the version of Emily that he’s already somehow blessedly getting—her crashing in his guest room, him waking up to the smell of her shampoo in the bathroom—than let his greedy heart have the chance at more. 

She gapes at him over dinner that evening. “Really?”

“Really.”

“I was sure you’d need more convincing.”

Hotch chuckles. “And leave you to the wolves all by yourself?” he replies simply.

Her smile is brilliant when she tilts her glass of wine toward his for a quick cheers. “Thank you.”

His eyes meet hers. “Always.”

*

He has long considered red to be her color, but when he picks her up at her place, he finds that blue is a compelling new contender.

She is, simply put, stunning—inky blue silk, dark as midnight, falling down her body like water. The color makes her eyes look impossibly darker, and he has to take a deep breath when he first sees her. 

“Wow, Emily,” he says, and the gravel of his voice has her biting back a blush. “You look beautiful.”

She can’t help but run a hand down the lapel of his jacket as she murmurs her thanks and responds sweetly in kind. She had almost dissuaded him from trying to match exact shades, but somehow, he has managed to do it—navy, almost black, with faint pinstripes that are only visible up close. Close, like she is now. 

There’s no reason to, but he rests a hand at the small of her back as he guides her to his car, and then it’s just a matter of keeping his hands on the wheel for the drive to the embassy. She’s given him most of the spiel before, both in the lead-up to the wedding and organically, at one of their whiskey nights or over coffee some morning, but she fills in the gaps over the course of their drive: James and Elizabeth’s story, of course, but also Richard, loved only in his absence. Embassy staff to corner for stories of a wayward young Emily, cousins to look out for, scandals brewing just under the surface. 

Through it all, he can’t stop looking at her. She’s always been utterly captivating and today is no exception, not when she’s talking so animatedly, not when she takes his hand when they arrive, not when she doesn’t question his touch and instead leans deeper into it.

Still, though, they’re on the same page as the evening progresses, smoothly correcting guests who assume they are partnered or married. She’s a dear friend, he says warmly, and she does the same. Just friends.

But there had been a kiss once. She’d come over and he’d made dinner, as had become their post-case habit if one of them didn’t want to be alone; there’d always be takeout and alcohol, and TV on in the background for noise, then a cab home or a guest bed and, more often than not, an extra set of clothes that had been left there at a previous such iteration. Only this time, they’d been laughing about something, god even knows what, and she was just so strikingly beautiful that before he knew what he was doing, he’d leaned in close, barely an inch between them. He’d heard the little surprised breath catch in her throat, watched her eyes move from his, down to his mouth, and back up, and when their lips skimmed, it could have almost been called an accident. Except there was nothing accidental about her forehead resting against his, or the graze of his thumb under her chin, or the way they just breathed each other in for a good long moment before pulling back knowingly.

“We shouldn’t,” she’d said, not bothering to hide her mournful tone.

“I know.”

It wasn’t awkward. There was too much at stake for it to be awkward. Instead, she simply reached forward and ran a finger along his cupid’s bow, then sweetly tapped the dimple that was still nestled in his cheek. She still slept in his guest room that night but was gone before he woke the next morning, a fresh pot of coffee already going.

Chapter Text

After their non-conversation in Dave’s sitting room—after the look in her eyes when she says it’s a date—Hotch knows.

She has tried to be discreet, but he has always known where to look with her—or, in this case, known what to listen to. There are mornings when Emily comes into the office with a voice that catches and strains around each word, and the sound returns him to the months immediately after Foyet, nightmares turning his throat ragged and raw. 

He never lets on that it’s intentional, but he starts making sure he has a hotel room that shares a wall with hers when they’re away on cases. Sometimes, if the team didn’t have to double up and if the walls are thin enough, he hears her pacing off her nerves well into the morning, the steady back and forth of her footfall like a second heartbeat. On those nights, he stays up, too, keeping vigil with her though she doesn’t even know it.

It’s the closest they get these days.

She steadfastly refuses all other forms of his help, counter-arguments ready on the tip of her tongue. It makes no sense for him to come over to her place like she used to do for him because his time with his son is already so limited, she says, offering absolution that he doesn’t want; and she can’t crash in his guest room because her nightmares will wake Jack. Later, her argument changes: what will Beth think?

He tells her it doesn’t matter, entreats her to call him when said nightmares jolt her awake and she needs to hear someone else’s voice—a voice without an Irish brogue—and she smiles. But she doesn’t take him up on the offer. 

So, he knows. Knows that she’s leaving.

He knows, because it feels exactly like how it did right before Doyle, the distance she manufactured right before she ran. He now knows why she did it, of course, and at this point, she’s apologized a thousand times even though he never needed a single one from her.

He wants something else from her, though: a chance to stand in the wreckage of her life as firmly as she once did for him. 

She doesn’t give him that chance.

*

There’s a moment after she returns. Just one.

She comes over after a bad day—after Regina Lampert and their conversation on the jet, it’s not a question of if, just a matter of when—and it’s so similar to their old routine that it makes her head spin. There’s whiskey instead of wine, pizza on the way, and they sit close enough on his couch for him to see that she’s been picking her nails to stumps again.

It feels so right so instantly that panic prickles under her collar. She knows if she lingers in the doorway of his guest bedroom, she’ll see the sheets turned down, and a shirt and sweatpants laid out for her in case the items in her go-bag won’t do. She’d have to roll the waist for the pants to fit, but she’s done as much before.

But she can’t. She can’t fall back into this and crack her chest wide open all over again.

She doesn’t stay the night, and doesn’t come over after that.

Because, well, Beth.

Beth with her tinkling laugh. Beth with her innocent eyes. Beth with her scarf precisely the same shade of blue-green as Emily’s. 

Beth enters his life and it’s not unwelcome, and Emily is happy for him. Really. 

She’s not not jealous. She had long thought they could be more, had spent several nights on the verge of telling him the truth: that the quiet constancy of his presence sustained her, that she treasured the way he had inched his way into her life. She kept the confessions to herself, though, because he deserved better than her and her baggage, her scars and night terrors. 

Even though the baggage feels lighter when he’s around. Even though the scars on her mind fade at his coaxing. Even though the nightmares are rarest on the days he makes his company nonnegotiable.

She just...hadn’t wanted to push him. Their friendship was far too precious to gamble by asking for more, and she couldn’t, wouldn’t, risk losing him. 

And then—the freesia on her doorstep. Bitter vindication of her silence.

A reminder of how much greater that loss could be.

But even with Doyle in the ground, she can’t say the words now either, not when she’s already decided she can’t stay. What good would it do to tell him that she subsisted on thoughts of him while she was in France? What purpose would it serve other than to cause more pain, make parting harder? 

Her heart stutters when he tugs her smoothly away from Dave and into his arms for a turn around the dance floor. There’s this look in his eyes, so beautifully serious, and not for the first time, she wonders if he can read her mind. The weight of his look settles at the base of her throat like a stone even after he pulls her close enough that she can no longer see his face.

“Lost in thought?” she asks, when his silence becomes too much to bear.

He smiles into her hair. “I was thinking about your mother’s wedding, and how that was the last time we danced together.” There’s a pause and she skates a hand down his back as if to brush away the words she knows are coming next. “Tell me why this feels like a ‘last,’ too.” 

It’s blisteringly unfair, really, how easily they move together and how right she feels in his arms. It makes the moment so much crueler. 

“First thing tomorrow,” she reminds again, echoing his words to her and shaking her head. They can’t do this now. Not with her eyes already burning. Not with Beth and Jack looking on. 

His grip on her waist tightens for a moment.

And then he lets her go.

Chapter Text

He assumes there’s a chance that she’ll be in attendance, but he doesn’t hear from her one way or the other. That isn’t indicative of much, though; they don’t talk much anymore, aside from birthday and holiday greetings and the occasional call about a profile.

She’s visited only twice in the three years since her move to London. The first, hardly a social call—a brief mention of JJ and she was on a flight to them. How long do we have you, he’d asked, and something untouchable had lit in the air when she’d turned to him, six hours on her tongue.

After drinks with the team, though, the hours had passed quickly, too quickly, and she’d crashed in his guest room for a quick nap before he woke her for coffee and a drive to the tarmac. 

Then she was gone again, his elbow warm where she’d squeezed goodbye. 

There was also a Christmas at Dave’s, time just as scarce. Everyone had vied for her attention, flowers craning at the neck to chase after her light. He couldn’t compete with them, though, not under Beth’s curious gaze. Couldn’t pull Emily aside to say are things the way you hoped they would be when you moved to London, or are you sleeping, or it’s just not the same without you.

But she’s here now, and that’s what matters.

“This is a surprise,” he says, and he couldn’t tame his grin if he tried. She steps right into his hug like it’s habit, her skin warm to the touch from the afternoon sun. He has to force his hands away; she feels their loss acutely when he does. “I wasn’t sure you’d be here.”

“I almost wasn’t,” she admits with a secretive smile. “I flew out on a red-eye and got in this morning. I could only swing the weekend, but I didn’t want to miss this.”

Only—when she says this, she’s looking straight at him. 

He holds her gaze, drinks her in. She is the picture of spring in her pale yellow crepe dress, a dainty daisy chain necklace circling her throat. “Lucky us,” he says, his voice low and smooth. “You look good.” 

“Thank you.” She pats his chest once, lingering just so against the tan linen of his jacket before remembering where they are and dropping her hand back down to her side. “So do you.”

No, he wants to say, you really look good. Because she does. Beautiful, of course, but lighter and freer, too, and the change is all he can think about as they walk each other through the basics. They both answer how are you by defaulting to talk of work, leading to pointed glares and laughter over just how little some things change. 

It’s impossible to fit three years into a few stolen moments, but they still try with anecdotes about her latest attempt at quitting caffeine (and, consequently, her new favorite place to get a flat white), how much he thinks she would like Tara, how much she thinks Jack would get a kick out of London. Finally, she asks the question she’s been skirting around since she realized he might have come to the wedding alone.

“How’s Beth?” 

His eyes are on her as she tugs at her necklace, gold looped around slender fingers. He remembers it as a nervous habit she’d hoped would take the place of her nail picking. “We split a few months ago, actually.”

“Oh.” She blinks, genuinely surprised by the confirmation. “I’m sorry,” she says. And she is; ever the martyr, she’d always wanted easy and innocent for him, even at her own expense.

“Don’t be,” he assuages. “It was time.” The statement is simple, kind, yet the way he looks at her when he says the words sets something unspooling in her chest. Together, they watch for a moment as guests begin to gather for Derek and Savannah’s grand entrance into the reception. “Any plans while you’re stateside?” he asks as they join the pull of the crowd.

“Once the girls corner me, I’m sure a brunch date will be in my future,” she says affectionately. “Otherwise, nothing. Why?” she asks, and it’s a fight to keep the naked yearning out of her voice. “Do you have something in mind?”

She’s opening the door, he knows. All he has to do is walk through.

Once, he would have been more scared to chance a misstep. But now?

“We probably won’t need our usual takeout,” he says carefully, hoping he still has the right to call anything of theirs usual, “but I’ve got a bottle of good wine with your name on it if you have the time this evening.”

She smiles, and a spark returns to her countenance—a kind of bright-eyed but intimate confidence from her that she hasn’t employed around him in years.

“I’d love that.”

*

Hotch is right: the wine is delightful. But the company is even more so.

At his place, they change out of their garden party formalwear and she dons his clothing like she once did, pajama pants rolled at the waist yet still falling low on her hips. She laughs with him like she once did, too, and the sight of her joy is headier to him than the tempranillo.

She recaps Clyde’s recent antics and pretends not to notice his brief flicker of jealousy at the mention of the other man. There’s talk of Jack and all the ways he’s becoming like his father, pensive and self-sacrificing, quietly kind—but silly, too, boisterous around the right people.

This time with her is a sacrament, so he tries not to sully it with talk of unsubs. But she asks about Donnie Mallick, and soon they’re pouring the last of the bottle for a toast to Gideon.

“Do you think they have chess in the afterlife?” she muses, and the absurdity of the question catches him so off guard that he chokes on his drink. His fit of coughing and sputtering laughter is only drawn out all the more at her oh no as she leans in to pat his back, and by the time he has recovered, their cheeks hurt from grinning.

“I can’t believe it’s been three years since we did this,” she says on a sigh, her expression wistful but bright.

Slowly, his face falls.

“Closer to five.”

“That can’t be right,” she says quietly.

He stares at the last dregs in his glass. He’s done the math so many times that it’s second nature when he says, “There was the lead-up to Boston, then the seven months you were in France. Then the year between then and your move, and the three years since.”

She swallows thickly at the flatness of his voice. “Hotch…”

He blinks mutely, like he’s just realized he said any of it aloud and hadn’t intended to. Like he’s trying very quickly to close a box that is finally demanding to stay open. “I’m sorry, Emily,” he says, shaking his head. “We don’t have to talk about this. I shouldn’t have…” 

Shouldn’t have what? he thinks, though he doesn't finish the sentence. Corrected you? Showed my hand?

Let you insist on solitude in the first place? 

She answers by placing a hand to his cheek, her thumb anchored at his jaw in order to tilt his gaze up to hers. She can see him trying to replace the scar tissue over the wound in real-time. “Talk to me,” she entreats gently.

“I wanted to help you,” he says eventually, small and raw. “Emily, you did so much for me after Foyet. But then I couldn’t do the same for you.” He closes his eyes, then turns his head so that his mouth brushes the soft heel of her palm when he speaks. “Why—maybe if I had—” 

“There was nothing you could have done to convince me to stay,” she says, absolving him; and this time, the absolution is yearned for. She moves her hand down to his to give it a squeeze. “There was…too much I wanted that I couldn’t have. I needed to find my way back to myself. I’ve nearly done that.”

“What happens when you do?”

“I don’t know,” she admits.

He’s still holding her hand, toying lazily with her fingers. It’s another thing that makes him think of how they used to be—little touches, tiny anchors, planets in each other’s orbit. Then:

“Do you ever think about coming back?”

It’s the logical next question, another one that he has deliberately kept to his chest, not wanting her to interpret it as pressure but also fearful of her answer. The alcohol loosens his tongue, though, and he doesn’t regret it.

In turn, she takes a long sip of wine, finishing her glass. “More than you know.” She tips her head back then lolls it against the top of the couch to look at him. She smiles, sad and sweet. “I miss this. I miss you.”

The look in her eyes has his heart beating harder, and when he leans into the gravitational pull of her, it isn’t a conscious reaction as much as it is instinct, plain and pure. “I miss you, too,” he whispers.

“You know I can’t come back,” she whispers back, even as she tugs him closer, closer. “Not yet. Not this soon.”

“I know,” he says. And he kisses her anyway.

They’ve never talked about the last time they were here: a kiss that was more a well, of course than any kind of precipice. 

(Of course she loved him.

Of course he loved her.)

It was a mutual, unspoken decision to let it lie; they were friends, best friends even, simply couldn’t be more. But the force of the memory hurtles forward now, and alongside it, something else blooms quickly—the need to get utterly lost in each other.

They can’t go there, though, they can’t. Because she still has to return to London in less than a day. Because there’s so much they need to say and not enough time to say it all, even if they started right this minute; and they can’t start this minute anyway, because while they’re not drunk, they’re not sober either. She can taste the wine on his lips, in his mouth, and while it represents something she might just as quickly resent, she melts into it nonetheless.

Because it means something, right? That kissing him feels like its own rebirth? That the sound of her whispering his name as he presses her into the couch heals something inside him that has been barren for years? All of their close conversations, all of their treasured time together, and he can still count on only one hand the number of times he’s heard his given name fall from her lips. He wants to hear it again and again, in any context he can have but especially in this one.

Still, they won’t do this. Nothing has changed; there’s too much to lose. He pulls her to her feet, tugs her into his bed and under the covers with him. They won’t. Nothing more than a few tipsy confessions that they won’t remember in the morning, hands fisting into each other’s shirts—his shirts, both of them.

Her hummed laugh against the wall of his chest. An arm anchored around her in sleep.

Chapter Text

It’s not supposed to be like this.

She’s not supposed to be this eager to see him. But he’s all she can think about as she steps into her dress and Andrew zips her up.

It’s been a long time since they were last face to face. Mostly, they’ve stolen time over Skype. Once she returns to London after Derek and Savannah’s wedding, they grasp at the routine they once had, sharing meals despite time zones whenever they can. He eats dinner while she makes breakfast in the mornings, bleary-eyed, and vice versa. A poor substitute for the real thing, but sustenance nonetheless.

She misses hearing the depth of his laugh in person; the sound of his happiness just isn’t the same over a line. But then Peter Lewis escapes, and she doesn't hear the sound of his happiness at all.

*

They move back to D.C. the moment it’s safe to do so.

Hotch leaves the timing of it up to Jack, in case he wants to see out the end of his school year, which has already been interrupted enough; but Jack is eager to get back to his real name and his old friends and, above all, Jessica.

Hotch, on the other hand, is terrified. He hears snippets from Dave about what Scratch did to Emily—because of him—and he can’t bear the thought. He wakes physically ill, haunted by what little details have been passed along to him, and he can’t help but wonder what Emily has kept to herself. He grows scared of seeing her, scared she will resent him. Logically, he knows his fear is unnecessary; she isn’t the type, especially not with a decade of trust and respect and friendship between them. But it feels in many ways as if Scratch has reset the clock, or that he’s the grain of sand in the gears, stopping it entirely.

When he finally works up the courage to contact her, he’s been back in the area for weeks and he can’t put it off any longer because Dave has forced his hand: a family dinner when the team returns from the case they’re on, and Hotch is invited.

We’re all looking forward to seeing you.

Everyone? 

Yes, Dave says knowingly. Everyone. 

Everyone is right, but she cries when she sees him. Deliberately hangs back from the rest of the group and draws away when they make eye contact, spurring him to follow. He can still remember the silence between them as she brought a hand up to his face to confirm that he was real. 

In that moment, he resolves to tell her everything: that thoughts of her sustained him while he was in witness protection, that he’s been too scared all these years to love her out loud and settled instead with loving her in silence, but that life is short and he’s tired of deferring to fear. He owes her so much but he especially owes her the truth, without conditions or expectations.

So he bides his time just a little while longer, waiting patiently for the immediacy of their trauma to fade and for them to regain their footing. Brick by brick, they reacquaint themselves with each other. They build back their routine; or, at least, they try. Rare morning coffees, a return to meals shared over Skype if she has a case, check-ins over text.

He sends her one such text after he sees her on the D.C. evening news, assuaging the city after a series of machete attacks. The next time he sees her, he thinks—that’ll be when he tells her.

Only, the next time he sees her, she mentions a date. 

“What is it you wanted to tell me?” she asks, two fingers lightly resting against his wrist. 

Haven’t you disrupted her life enough? he thinks. Would you really do it again?

“Nothing, Emily,” he smiles. “It’s just good to see you.”

*

“It’s so good to see you,” she says now, and he echoes the sentiment immediately. “How many Rossi nuptials have you been present for?”

“I think this makes eight.” 

She laughs, then gets this look on her face like she’s surprised by the force of her own laughter, the ease of her joy around him. Her voice softens as she asks how are you, and he wonders if he has any right to call this tone his. Wonders if she uses it with Mendoza, then shakes the thought away. 

The man in question finds them soon after, sidling up to Emily and bringing a hand to rest at her lower back. Though he’s been out of the field for two years, Hotch still catches the way her demeanor changes at the touch. She draws herself up a little straighter like a statue—this beautiful, lifeless thing—and her still-sweet gaze cools, distance ushered in by proximity. 

“Andrew,” she greets with a smile, “this is Aaron Hotchner, former Unit Chief of the BAU. Hotch, Andrew Mendoza, Unit Chief of the D.C. field office.”

There are some notable omissions in her introduction—namely, any indication of who Andrew is to her. Hotch catches that, too.

“Pleasure,” Andrew says, his handshake firm. “Emily’s told me a lot about you.”

In fact, he hears about the other man from her often, much of it unconscious: times she cries his name in sleep, distressed. Andrew wakes her from these nightmares of Scratch, but when she recounts them for him, she never mentions the role Hotch plays in them. In turn, he never tells her he’s heard. 

He doesn’t need much more confirmation than that, but her toast during the wedding reception gives it to him in spades.

Dave and Krystall are twin flames, two souls that are always meant to be together, she pronounces to the room, ardent and warm. Sometimes it takes time, sometimes it takes a parallel universe or something, but the thing about twin flames is that nothing can keep them apart. 

Andrew looks up at Emily then, and discovers without surprise that she is looking at Hotch as she says the words. Hotch, who is gazing right back at her, devotion in every line of his face.

They are a magic unto themselves. And together, they light the way for all of us, she finishes. But Andrew barely hears her.

“How long have you loved him?” he asks her when they’re alone.

Once, she might have considered deflecting, continuing to tread water. But not this time.

“Nine years,” she says.

*

“Andrew left,” she tells him when he finds her outside by herself. 

“Left?” he echoes, studying her. There’s a faraway quality about her; she’s deliberately not looking at him, her gaze on the colorful figures indoors, gathering for the cutting of the cake. Neither of them move to join, however, especially at her next words.

“It was a long time coming. But then, well—he saw me with you and knew immediately.”

Oh.

Oh.

There’s any number of things he should say to her right now for the sake of propriety: I’m sorry, and how do you feel, and what do you need. Only, none of the platitudes rise to his lips. 

“Knew what?” he says instead.

She finally meets his eyes, a small crease between her brows. He recognizes it as doubt, unfamiliar on her lovely face—that she thinks his question is out of ignorance, that perhaps she’s gotten it all wrong—and he reaches for her, trails a finger along the neckline of her dress, following the gray and white marbled pattern down so that his palm eventually cups her elbow. 

“I’m not asking because I don’t know the answer, Emily. I’m asking because I want to hear you say it,” he clarifies, his voice not unlike that which she once followed instinctively in the field. Only this time, it’s lower, smooth like silk.

The sound sets her alight and she complies.

They slip away unnoticed, and on his couch that has seen so much of them over the years, she tells him about falling in love with him after Foyet, almost saying the words before Doyle then thanking whatever gods would listen that she didn’t. She tells him about France and yearning for him, letters she wrote to him without ever intending to send them, just to feel close to him again.

She tells him about seeing him with Beth and wanting his happiness more than anything, even at the expense of her own. At that, he chokes around a laugh that might also be a single sob, because he knows the feeling intimately. The sentiment could just as easily be his own about her and Mendoza.

She tells him about London—the path of least resistance, though a lonely one. There was too much I wanted that I couldn’t have, she’d said when she visited for Derek and Savannah’s wedding, and she cups his face between her hands now to force him to grasp what she means. 

And she tells him, for the first time, about the lie that lured out Scratch. This time, he doesn’t hold back his sobs, and they only continue at her next words.

“I was intent on giving you your space when you returned from WITSEC,” she says. “But I had so little of my own space left, and certainly not enough to offer you. So, when you and I started spending time together again, I convinced myself I couldn’t tell you how I felt about you. I wanted to be able to give you all of me; you meant too much to me for me to give you anything less.

“But with Andrew, there wasn’t a decade of emotional intimacy to build on, so having one foot out the door was a foregone conclusion. It wasn’t fair to him.” She swallows, sheepish. “He was safe, but the reason there was no risk with him is because there was nothing real either.”

He laces their fingers together. “Does this feel real?”

“Yes,” she breathes.

“Yes,” he agrees; and then, it’s his turn.

He tells her things he’s said before, like the singular role she played in his recovery—physical, emotional—after Foyet, and how he wishes he could have been the rock for her that she had been for him. Before Boston, in France, after.

“You found other ways,” she assures him. “What else would you call faking my death? Safeguarding my life?”

He tells her new things, too. How he swallowed the words down for months, because revealing his feelings for her so soon after she’d returned to her life felt like a cruelty. He’d wanted to give her space to heal, not add more pressure to her wound. Enter: Beth.

“She knew, I think. Knew that my heart wasn’t in it. I tried,” he confesses. “But I was just chasing the depth that I had with you.” 

They’re trying to be good. Trying to let the other talk, trying not to let anything interrupt the conversation that has been a decade in the making, but Emily can’t help but lean in close until their foreheads are touching, his breath hers and her breath his. 

They’re still like that when he tells her about the hotel rooms and staying up with her in the dead of night. They’re so close that when she cries, he can almost taste the salt of her tears, tears that slow but don’t fade when he begs her to forgive him for putting her in the sights of Peter Lewis when she had worked so diligently never to put him in the sights of Ian Doyle. He tells her how she danced around the edges of his conscience constantly while he was in witness protection, how he made up his mind to tell her he loved her when the dust from Scratch settled.

How Mendoza came into her life precisely then and how he couldn’t, just couldn’t, disrupt her life again.

“You could never be a disruption,” she says simply. Then she closes the distance, distance that is barely there to begin with, and presses her lips to his, long and slow and sweet.

Like everything between them, they both give and give and give into the kiss, taking more tentatively until they realize that, finally, they can. It’s like a dam breaking: the slide of his palms over the fabric of her dress then against the bare skin of her upper back, the nape of her neck. She can’t remember ever feeling as grounded and known as she does now, under the wide expanse of his hands; but he quickly outdoes himself with an “I love you” said against her lips.

“I love you, too,” she whispers, dizzy at the smile he gives her in response.

When she folds her body flush against his, it’s like coming home. Like victory, too, no barriers between them anymore. No more alcohol that can take the blame, no more bureaucratic hoops, no more differing time zones, no more stints in hiding or witness protection, no more partners trying to fill a void that was never meant to be filled. 

This time, when he leads her to his bedroom, the intention is different, anticipation and yearning thick in the air. It’s in his touch, needy but reverent, like he’s trying to tell her with his body that she has always been the way for him to feel his way out of the dark.

It’s the furthest thing from a rebound, but as he draws down her zipper and she steps out of her dress, she gives him one last way out anyway, says she’s willing to wait as long as he needs to make sure her heart is in the right place after Andrew.

But he knows her heart and doesn’t want to wait anymore, and neither does she.

Chapter Text

It’s his favorite wedding by far.

Jessica deserves the world, and Sam gives it to her readily. Hotch says as much in his toast, recounting how he knew they were right for each other from the very first time he saw them together. Jessica grounds Sam, as she does so many others, and Sam brings frivolity and shine back into Jessica’s life, a welcome return. They are gorgeously matched, their happiness catching, and the assembled guests raise their glasses in agreement. 

It’s a tad bit unconventional for him to give a toast, they concede; he is, after all, a bride’s late sister’s ex-husband, and there are at least a handful of Brooks family members present whom he has met before, a lifetime ago. But Jessica insists, as fervently as she had insisted Jack walk her down the aisle, and he can’t say no.

When he sits back down, there is still plenty more he wants to say about and to the women, but he tables his personal gratitudes for a time without an audience, and because words feel woefully inadequate for what is on his heart.

He insists on finding the language somehow, though. Because, the thing is, for a decade, Jessica makes it clear to all of her significant others that Jack is a non-negotiable, a fact that has guilt burrowing deeper into his chest each time a partner isn’t willing to make sense of their unique family dynamic.

But Sam is different. Sam adores Jack, and the feeling is mutual.

Their family is indeed unique, but it is theirs, and he cherishes it.

Jessica’s well-merited happiness isn’t the only reason the wedding is his favorite, though. It’s the first that he and Emily attend as a couple, a long time coming, and being at her side in that capacity—instead of just as friends, or with other dates on their arms—is thrilling. He is openly hers and she is openly his.

Actually, utterly radiant is what she is, clad in a bronze-hued jumpsuit that has her shimmering as she dances with Jack—Jack, who is fifteen somehow. It’s such a self-conscious, performative age, boyish grins bitten back to appear cool and indifferent. But there’s none of that around Emily. She’s always had a knack of loving on both Hotchner boys so thoroughly that any prescribed walls and pretense simply slip away.

Hotch watches them for a while, then can’t help but take out his phone and snap a photo of them as they make their way over to him, a lively, laughing blur. The resulting image is a quick favorite and he makes it his lock screen instantly, replacing yet another picture of the two of them. He’d taken that one surreptitiously as they slept on the couch, slumped together, Jack wiped after lacrosse practice and Emily exhausted after a day in court.

It hits him then, that he has a life he wants to document. His photo library used to be comprised solely of photos of Jack, an even split of moments he captured himself and screenshots of video calls. But Hotch is in the pictures himself now, Emily’s face pressed close to his, and there are snapshots of every little thing, tangible proof of the light that she has brought into his life. She has given him so much, but especially this: a newfound attention to the fact that joy is all around him. Not just a smattering but a heaping, and not just on special occasions but in the interstices, too. Like the sunset at one of Jack’s games, all of which he can now attend; or Emily and Jess gossiping about one thing or another, surely conniving against him; or her very haphazard attempt at latte art on a lazy morning, more precious to him than if it had been perfectly stenciled onto the foam.

The realization has him thinking of Haley and her last words to him: Promise me that you will tell Jack how we met, and how you used to make me laugh. I want him to believe in love, because it is the most important thing. But you need to show him.

He feels her presence here at the wedding in many ways: in the locket tied around the base of Jessica’s bouquet featuring pictures of Haley and Roy, yes, but especially in Jack’s bright smile, currently being brought out by Emily. 

You need to show him, he hears Haley say again as he wraps his arms around the two of them. And he thinks they’ve done okay.

*

Emily catches Sam’s bouquet, which garners a laugh from those in the know. Because—well. There is a ring on her finger.

He gives it to her mere months after they finally say I love you, because after ten years of knowing, they both agree there isn’t much of a point in waiting any longer. She has known seemingly forever that Hotch is who she wants to come home to at the end of each day, and that’s precisely when he does it.

Retirement has made him an excellent nester, so by the time she walks through the door, he has a glass of wine waiting for her. He kisses her long and slow, her favorite hello, then urges her to shed her work clothes and join him on the couch. When she returns, he hauls her legs into his lap and presses his thumbs into the soles of her feet to work out the kinks put there by the heels she insists on wearing now that she’s Section Chief. She falls into his tenderness readily, recounting the vicissitudes of the day in quiet murmurs interrupted only by her appreciative sighs here and there.

The way he tells the story, he didn’t set out to propose that night but couldn’t deny the moment once it arose. She’s picking at the hem of her shirt as she talks, a tee of his she’s claimed as her own since they started living together (“I’ve always slept better in your clothing,” she says one day, so casually, and the only response that comes moderately close to communicating what that makes him feel is carrying her off to bed), going on about some sad sack in the Director’s office he might almost pity if it weren’t for how much he enjoys the visual of Emily ball-busting in her new role.

“I do miss being in the field every once in a while,” she’s saying, her eyes closed as his finger runs along the inside of her ankle. She gets this dreamy quality to her voice when she talks like this, musing aloud; he loves hearing the thoughts as they occur to her, fresh and unfiltered. “But is it crazy that I don’t really mind the bureaucracy these days? There’s a version of me that would have minded more, certainly. But this one just has too much to lose,” she says simply, and with pride. “I’m so lucky I get to say that.” 

Suddenly, he’s risen to his feet, overcome with the ferocity of the love he feels for her—every version of her, but especially this one.

“Honey, are you okay?” she asks, reaching for him in concern.

His smile is slow, wide. “Very. Give me a moment, will you?”

“Of course.”

Then he’s back with the ring in hand, and he’s on one knee, and she’s breathing out his name like it’s the only thing her lungs have ever been able to do.

“I’ve been waiting for the right moment, but every moment with you is the right moment. I’m so lucky I get to say that,” he echoes back to her. “Emily Prentiss, will you marry me?”

She’s joined him on the floor before either of them have even realized she’s moved, wrapped herself around him like a vine, a mess of limbs without beginning or end.

“Yes.”

Later, he has the audacity to apologize for not taking her to dinner but she assures him it couldn’t have possibly been more perfect. That she always imagined it this way—“Yes, I’ve imagined it often, of course I have,” and he’s kissing her again—like so many of their other consequential conversations. Ten years later means it’s a different couch they find themselves on these days, but the comfort and intimacy of that space, their space, is still there. 

Now, she looks down at her ring—white gold, marquise-cut, winking against Sam’s bouquet—as Jessica gives her a jubilant smile. She’s still wearing it that evening as he twines their fingers together and presses her hand into the mattress, the perfect post-wedding nightcap.

Each time is as transfixing as the first: the way he shudders when she traces over his scars with gentle fingers and lips, her breathy cries as his hands come to her hips and steer her forward, angle her just right. She hovers over him now, silver hair spilling over her shoulders, and he stares at her with naked adoration like she’s something divine.

They’ve always had this wordless rhythm together and that familiarity extends here, a perfect give and take. She likes when he uses his words, too, though, and it’s his breath against her ear as he whispers how gorgeous she is, how loved, how much he can’t wait until it’s their turn to get married, soon, soon, soon, that has her gasping, exquisite, desperate.

She falls apart beautifully and he’s there to catch her, as always.

Chapter Text

They get married in January.

Elizabeth and James are there, as are JJ and Will, Derek and Savannah, Dave and Krystall, Jessica and Sam. There is so much love in their lives, each story a concentric circle culminating in and running simultaneously to this, theirs.

They’ve never really been ones for tradition; or at least, not tradition without purpose. They are far from typical, after all: a once-divorced widower and a woman once-dead, giving new meaning entirely to ‘til death do we part. 

It’s only by chance, then, that Emily has her somethings white, blue, borrowed, and new. Crepe silk, cool and crisp beneath her palms. Baby blue delphinium in her bouquet—symbolic of joy, their florist had said, though they didn’t need flora for that. Delicate pearl studs, her mother’s. Their rings, to be carried dutifully down the aisle by Hank.

When they meet to declare their vows in private, his heart leaps to his throat at the sight of her, every overused aphorism on love suddenly feeling totally new. She is the picture of elegance, an array of sleek, gorgeous lines: the clean bateau neck of her dress, her hair in a classic chignon, a few wisps of silver pulled free. They are lines he wants to travel over and over again. Yet for all her meticulous grace, there is still so much softness, too, those same sleek lines curved by the gauzy carefreeness of her smile, the buoyant lilt to her voice.

“Hi,” he whispers in awe as she steps toward him.

“Hi,” she says back, just as tender. Then she’s in his arms. 

It takes them a moment to realize that they’re laughing, and then they can’t stop, the joy only multiplying when she wraps him up in the embrace of the heavy cashmere shawl draped around her shoulders. He’s never looked more beautiful to her than now, but it has little to do with the lush black of his suit or the barely-there brocade of his necktie and everything to do with the giddy, unabashed love written clear across his face.

“You’re shaking,” he murmurs eventually, moving to let her loop her arms around his waist beneath his suit jacket, in case she’s cold. “Nervous?”

“Happy,” she corrects, and his smile grows wider. He’d expected day-of nerves, too, but after the ten-year lead up to saying I love you, there are simply none left. Left in their wake instead was excitement, fleecy and bright.

When they finally read their letters to one another, it’s less of a vow exchange and more of a reaffirmation; they’ve said and lived into the words a hundred times over, much of the language the same as the vows they made to each other on his couch after Dave and Krystall’s wedding. Still, it isn’t redundant when she tells him that he’s been her port in every storm, the dry land when she’s drowning; or when she recounts to him the honor she felt at being the one to stand in his doorway a lifetime ago and tell him, then prove to him, that he wasn’t alone. 

(Later, sprawled out in bed, tipsy from champagne and still in their finery, she tells him of a line of scripture that slipped back into her life when she began falling in love with him, and has been on her mind since: Where you go, I will go, she begins, and he recognizes it immediately, and it’s this that has him finally undoing the intricate trail of buttons down her back.)

He calls her his best friend, integrity and devotion personified, and tracks the qualities through every version of her he’s been lucky enough to know: from the shrewd young agent in his unlit office, fresh out of hell, to the woman standing before him now, step-mother to his son. “There’s someone else who would like a ‘first look’ with you before the ceremony begins,” he says accordingly.

Jack.

Oh, Jack.

She’s managed to keep from crying so far, but when the teen appears at Jessica’s whispered go ahead and walks straight into her arms, she lets the tears fall, each one an answered prayer.

*

“I’m glad you agreed to be my plus one for my mother’s wedding all those years ago,” Emily hums, her voice a perfect harmony to the music of their first dance. “Think of everything we might have missed.”

He follows her gaze to see Dave pressing a kiss to Krystall’s cheek and Will reaching for JJ’s hand, the cadre of boys at the perimeter of the dance floor, Jack and Henry holding court over Michael and Hank and others, too.

In lieu of an answer, Aaron simply smiles and draws her in closer. It’s something he isn’t sure he’ll ever understand—how he survived an ocean between them when even here on their wedding day, with the silk of her in his arms, he needs her closer still.

He knows her comment is mostly in jest—Elizabeth and James’s wedding hadn’t marked the start of their story, but rather a turning point seen best in retrospect—but he replies earnestly anyway, thinking of all the times they have come together for a dance like this one since then. All the times he has held her like this on the precipice of something new.

“We would have always found our way here, don’t you think?” 

There is much she isn’t certain of: fate, soulmates, things written in the stars. She’s seen too much to hold these as truths. But if there’s one thing she does believe in, without doubt or hesitation, it’s this. It’s them.

“Yes,” she breathes, then presses her lips to his. “Yes, I do.”