Fuck Yeah Hotchniss

As he didn't seem to understand what she was doing there, she explained:

“We’re ready to go back to the hotel. We'll be taking off tomorrow. I came to see if you were up to following us.”

He looked down at his outfit and she smiled when he looked back up at her. After what he'd just been through, she wasn't surprised he was so slowed down. He was digesting – slowly – this evening and the days that had gone before. The suspect had encroached heavily on his private life, and this was definitely not the sort of thing he appreciated. Even with his team members, he distilled this information in dribs and drabs – often when he had no choice. And with her, he was only just beginning to open up, allowing her only a few minutes' window before closing abruptly. An attitude she couldn't very well reproach him for since she was no better. By now, she knew more about him than he knew about her. 

He turned his head away, continuing to observe the white tiles beneath their feet. She stroked his shoulder, as much to keep him in the moment as to reassure him.

“What did she tell you?” she asked, both out of curiosity and to encourage him not to keep it all to himself.

“She… “- he gulped – “she said that I was a good person. Because I keep my promises.”

“She’s right.”

If she went by his words alone, or those of people who didn't know him, her lover was a terribly boring, cold, unsympathetic, uptight, tactless, and even creepy guy. As for the last one, she admitted that his frown was no laughing matter. But apart from that, she knew that beneath his rough exterior was a lovely man, a little lost at times in the codes of society. If he did hurt someone – morally or physically – it was rarely intentional on his part.

“Yes, but not for that,” he replied with a sigh.

“What do you mean?” she frowned, confused.

“She…”

He froze, tucking his chin to his chest. He folded up to protect himself. It was a reflex, but she sensed he wanted to talk anyway. Emily slipped her hand into his and he agreed to intertwine his fingers with hers. She placed a kiss on his shoulder through his shirt to encourage him.

“She was right… about Jack.”

Her heart missed a beat. The subject of his son was particularly sensitive. When she had heard the culprit speak, she had guessed the pain that had gone through her companion's body. He cherished the little boy like the precious treasure he was, not even sure he was related to him, but his ex-wife had been given sole custody and he could only see him when his schedule allowed and at Haley's pleasure. Quite simply, he’d never missed him as much as he had since they'd stopped living under the same roof.

“Aaron…”

“I gave him a present for Christmas, I don't even know what he thought of it,” he revealed, turning his irises on her.

He had tears in his eyes. She herself had to hold back to avoid being hit by a ricochet. 

“At the same time, it's complicated since he lives with his mother to know such things.”

“I'd know if I saw him as often as I should,” he retorted, dryly.

He was angry, but not at her. At himself. He had really planned to have contact with him – even for a few hours – at least once a week. But between the cases that propelled them halfway across the country for several days, his responsibilities as head of an FBI unit and their budding relationship, weeks passed before he was able to do anything. A breach of his word that was eating him up inside.

“Aaron, you do what you can.”

“Emily, I’ve missed everything.”

She scanned him, not quite grasping what he was talking about, but didn't let go. She had to keep that connection between them so he wouldn't escape and padlock his thoughts. Every day, they nibbled away at what little self-esteem he had.

“I missed... his first steps, his first words, the first time he ate with cutlery... everything. I missed all the milestones in his childhood when the three of us were still living together,” he snarled, tightening his grip on her hand. “I just had to be there.”

He no longer looked at her, his attention directed to the lockers facing them.

“And now it’s getting worse.”

She saw a tear roll down his cheek and onto his pants. He had no reaction. At least he trusted her enough not to hide his pain from her. An unconscious act that she appreciated enormously.

“I'm not a good person,” he concluded, before adding. “I’m not a good father.”

“Aaron, you can't say that knowing your options are limited.”

“I don't have to go into the field,” he cut her off.

She thought she'd heard wrong. 

“What?”

“I don't have to go into the field with you,” he clarified, observing her. “In my director's job description, it's stipulated that field missions are not an obligation.”

This revelation, which took her some time to analyze, suddenly changed everything. She then understood that he had knowingly deserted his home to accompany his team. If Haley had been aware of this detail, her rage against him suddenly became much more legitimate. She realized she'd let go of his hand without thinking. Her subconscious had openly expressed its disapproval for him, and Aaron put up with a fake smile. He wasn't even angry at her for abandoning him. She wanted to renew contact, but he stood up and turned his back to her to remove his bulletproof vest.

It was a disaster! She had unconsciously validated his negative ideas when she thought just the opposite. She had to find something to hold him, so he'd stop blaming himself.

“Why?” she said in her most confident tone.

He stopped but didn't face her.

“Why did you decide to go into the field in the first place?”

No answer.     

“Did you hate Haley?”

“No,” he immediately denied, turning his head.

“Did you hate Jack?”

“Of course not,” he said, presenting her with his profile.

“So, why?”

Silence filled the room. He didn’t know himself. Although very pragmatic and down-to-earth, her lover sometimes let his instincts guide him in certain matters, with not always very convincing results. And she was sure that this was the case this time.

“I'll tell you why,” she announced, remaining in her seat.

She was going to have to express what she thought without giving him the opportunity to counter-argue.

“That's because your brain loves it: solving investigations. He loves going out into the field, collecting clues, gathering evidence, and linking them together to find the culprit. That’s what your brain loves. It's what feeds it, what motivates it every day.”

She'd already seen him, in their spare time, playing with riddles and deduction games, and talking about them with great enthusiasm. His neurons were calibrated for this, and bathing in it calmed him. In contrast…

“Your brain isn't made for spending days filling in boxes on a spreadsheet or attending endless meetings with a bunch of sycophants who think only in terms of their wallets.”

If the world of politics was basically a basket of snakes for the men and women who navigated it on a daily basis, it was hell for him. Flattery went over his head, he was indifferent to bows, hypocrisy was a word absent from his vocabulary and, in any case, he didn't know how to lie.

“So, yes, Haley would have preferred you bore yourself to death five days a week, eight hours a day, to have you home every night to take care of a child you didn't want. But would you have been happy that way?”

Aaron looked at her in shock. That was the aim of her diatribe. To make him understand that the reproaches his ex-wife was heaping on him were proof that she hadn't understood who he really was and, above all, that she was the only one of the two who had wanted this child.

“Now, do you want me to tell you about a bad father?” she inquired without giving him a chance to answer. “Let’s talk about mine.”

His attitude changed slightly, shifting from stupefaction to interest.  

“My father, a diplomat, met my mother at yet another embassy gala and spent a few weeks with her. I'm not even sure it's a month,” she pointed out bitterly.

When she had asked Elizabeth Prentiss about the origin of her birth, the latter had not been much more tender than she had been about this man whose identity she had not even deigned to pass on to her.

“When he found out my mother was pregnant, he vanished into thin air.”

Aaron frowned, incensed, as he did every time he heard of a resigning parent. He had lived through it all his childhood and blamed himself for putting his son through it. 

“Worst of all, when she ran into him again later, when I was already born, he didn't ask any questions,” she recounted, feeling anger and sadness pounding in the back of her skull. “You think you're a bad father because you missed Jack's first steps, but mine, he doesn't even know what my name is. He doesn't know he has a daughter, when she was born, what she looks like, let alone what she's doing right now.”

She had spat out her last words more than she had spoken them. She was so disgusted by this guy, even though she'd never met him. At most, she could make out his features by subtracting her mother's from her face, but this was an activity that annoyed her more than anything else. This man was nothing less than a ghost in her life, a shadow that had left a vague imprint behind. Nothing like the individual in front of her, who worried every day about what his offspring would learn from him as they grew up.

Emily looked up and met her lover's pained gaze. She smiled and put the finishing touches to her argument.

“Do you still think she was wrong?”

He hesitated, then shook his head. She held out her hand to him – the one she'd unwittingly withdrawn – and he took it before sitting back down on the bench. He intertwined his fingers with hers, then kissed her tenderly on the forehead. A delighted smile stretched the profiler's lips. 

“Thank you,” he murmured, stroking her cheek.

“You’re a good person, Aaron. Don't let anyone make you think otherwise.”

He lowered his nose, sheepishly. She almost added, "not even yourself," but he already knew he was his worst critic.

“Come on, let's get out of here before they wonder what we're up to,” she said, pumped up.

She released his palm to pat his thigh and stand up, before heading for the exit door. But she quickly retraced her steps.

“Oh, yes. I was forgetting.”

She leaned towards him, gently grasped his chin, and placed her mouth on his.

“I love you.”

An expression of intense joy appeared on Aaron's face. She winked at him and left the locker room, serene and in love.

___

Originally, the director had planned to return to his former life as if nothing had happened, regardless of the risks to his own health, but as luck would have it, Emily knocked on his door the day before his return and learned of his insane plan. Negotiations had been tough, but she'd finally won the day and he'd given in. And even though it had forced her to get up at the crack of dawn, she had felt an intense sense of relief. 

Ever since she had seen that bloodstain on the carpet of his empty apartment, her attention to the man who had first rejected her before accepting her among his own, had redoubled in intensity. The first time she'd entered his office, her heart had raced for no reason, only to stop briefly when he'd shown her the way out. Every dark look he gave her afterwards was like a stab in the chest. Every rebuff to her had crushed her insides. Until that day when they had put things straight, when the truth had been revealed and the block of ice that surrounded him had melted to reveal the tenderness he hid from everyone. The furtive smile she'd seen that day had convinced her to stay.

For him. It was for him more than for anyone else that she had made this decision. She was drawn like a magnet to this gentle colossus who hid a thousand cracks, and who preferred to look after the people around him rather than himself. Who always put the wants and needs of those around him before his own. Who had been suffering in silence for so long that physical pain no longer really affected him. His eardrum was in a sorry state and the lacerations Foyet had given him had not fully healed, but he said nothing, not even grimacing. Others would be dying in their beds, whimpering and unable to move; not him. Because his team needed him. Because innocent people needed him, he kept quiet.

And she just wanted to take him in her arms, to rock him, to whisper in his ear that he had the right to give in. That he had the right to be in pain, that he had the right to cry, that he had the right to express his emotions like any other human being. She wanted to take his hand, squeeze it hard for a few moments and give him a reassuring smile. To tell him that it would pass, that it would be okay, that his life hadn't stopped the second his wife threw him out of his house before harassing him to sign the divorce papers. And that no, he wasn't just the boss of an FBI agency, that he wasn't invited to dinner parties just to be polite, and that he wasn't the bully and drill sergeant macho he thought he was. People appreciated his presence. People loved him. She loved him.

But that, he didn’t know. She herself hadn't realized it until she panicked at the idea of having lost him forever. Finding him on that hospital bed had been a joy mixed with fear and anxiety. But it had been eye-opening for her. What she felt for him had nothing to do with friendship. It was much more powerful, deeper, more intimate than that. She was dying to tell him, but her brain kept calling her to order. What she was experiencing was a chimera. He was too tall, too handsome, too unapproachable. What did she mean to him? Probably nothing.

Hotch nodded without adding anything, and silence fell between them. She wanted to add something, to make sure he'd understood the underlying message of her reply. He must have been intelligent enough to understand it in normal times, but at this hour he was in such a depressed state that she doubted he could hear it. Derek's concerns weren't unfounded; the tenant's survival instinct was at an all-time low. And she had to restrain herself from rushing towards him to press him against her chest. She'd been afraid for him again the day before, when the gunshots had echoed down that Louisville’s street. Afraid of losing him again and not having had the time to admit that her heart was beating for him.

“Get some sleep,” she said, for want of anything better.

“You too,” she replied right away, sincere.

He looked so exhausted. She would have liked to stay a little longer, to make sure he didn't brood too much over what had happened in the last few days, but she also knew how much one could sometimes feel the need to be alone. So, she nodded and stepped outside. The door closed behind her, and she heard the latch close and the chain on the door opener slide into the metal channel. The message was clear.

And yet, there she remained, on the carpet that welcomed her, her gaze fixed on that shut slammer. She should have walked away, gone home and rested. Instead, she stood there, dithering, a spectator of the inner struggle playing out in her head. There was what was socially appropriate to do and what her instincts wished to do, which clashed violently under her skull. Who was going to win? Which voice was she supposed to listen? The choice was a Cornelian one.

She closed her eyes, took a long, deep breath and let her body do its work. She knocked on the varnished wood. First timidly, then more frankly, to make sure she'd been heard. The door reopened shortly afterwards, and Hotch observed her, eyebrows furrowed.

“Prentiss? You… Did you forget something?”

“Yes.”

Without thinking or warning, she took his face in her hands and placed her lips on his. The giant didn’t react, taken off guard. And he stared at her in awe as she pulled away from him, crimson. She was realizing the folly of her gesture.

“I… I apologize. Sorry. I… I shouldn’t have done that. Sorry. I…”

He blinked, dumb and confused. She went on, suddenly panicked by the audacity she had shown. 

“I’m sorry. I wanted to do it, and I had to do it, but... but I realize that I was wrong. I…”

“Why?” he managed to articulate, still stunned.

“You… you are our boss. You're my line manager, we work together, and you have a whole team to manage fairly, I… You…” she lost herself in her argument.

She no longer dared to look him in the face. Molten magma coursed through her veins, her insides had solidified and a furious urge to weep threatened to overwhelm her. What had she done?

“It's forbidden, you risk getting fired and... besides, I don't even know how you feel about me.”

She could have continued babbling like this for an eternity if he hadn't, in turn, gently taken her visage between his large hands to kiss her. At first, she stiffened, disconcerted, then forgot everything. Propriety, protocol, what will people will say about it, the fact that the door was still open. She shut her eyelids, moved closer to him and prolonged the kiss she had so longed for. None of the sensations she was experiencing corresponded to what she had imagined. It was better in every way.

They parted after a time that was both too long and too short. Breathless, they looked at each other, smiling. 

“I… Would you like to spend the evening here? With me?” he asked, his ears red.

“Yes,” she answered without hesitation.

Her mouth stretched so much her cheeks ached.

“I warn you, I don't have anything to eat,” he added with surprising casualness.

She laughed. This announcement came as no surprise given the context, and she couldn't see herself holding it against him. She couldn’t care less.

“It doesn’t matter. Let’s just order.”

“Anything you want.”

The same silly grin lit up their faces. Without consulting each other, they kissed again, then she nestled against his chest, and he locked her in his arms. No, he wasn’t alone. He has Emily and she has him.

___