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The first Sunday morning they spent together was twenty minutes long. Emily tripped looking for her other shoe and Aaron woke up, sitting upright in bed, alert.
“Oh. Hey,” Emily had offered. She looked a mess, hair pulled back in a snarled ponytail, flecks of mascara on her cheeks.
“Hi” he had responded, running his hand through his hair as he watched her pull her shirt on.
“Listen, we probably shouldn’t…” She had started. Aaron held up his hand to stop her.
“Didn’t happen, go.”
Emily had smiled gratefully as she left, the early morning light was weak as she left his apartment, breathing heavily with guilt and nerves and a rolling hangover. She felt stupid as she walked to the nearest open café, joining others in similar states of dishevelment, hoping to ward off the pounding headache with too much caffeine.
The night before was blurry, chaotic. They had gone out to blow off steam, too many shots in a crowded bar, filled with agents and police and co-workers. Emily couldn’t find how it went from there to his apartment. How drunk and messy and blank her mind had been.
She remembered only flashes, how his chest looked when she pulled his shirt off. The bite into his shoulder as she wrapped herself around him, laughing as they fell into his bed, comfort as they fell asleep.
“Jesus Christ” She murmured to herself, arriving home and looking at herself in the mirror.
Hotch had showered immediately after she left, her perfume still clinging to his skin. He stood in the shower, bodily under the spray as he let the roar of water drown the sound of her moans from his ear.
“Fucking idiot” he whispered to himself, switching the shower to cold water as he forced himself to put it from his mind.
The second Sunday morning they spend together is practical. They meet at the shooting range to practise, dressed comfortably as they work through a box of bullets side by side in silence.
One of them suggests brunch, and they find themselves in a diner, fingertips numb from triggers and ears still slightly ringing. They talk about Jack and the Ambassador and the best toppings for pizza. They part with a smile and a thank you for the company. Each of them thinks how easy the silences seemed between them. They both shake their head at the brief fleeting thoughts.
The third Sunday morning they spend together is in a hospital. Emily at 2 am getting stitches in her arm after being hurt in a pursuit. Aaron stands close to her, close enough to see the pulsing blood from the wound. Instinctively she grabs his hand at the first thread of the needle, wincing from the pain. He stills but doesn’t pull away, letting her turn her face into his shoulder as she bites her lip, staying still as they stitch her skin back together.
When she’s discharged with painkillers and instructions he helps her to the SUV in silence, his hand ghosting on the small of her back as she climbs awkwardly into the passenger seat. She’s too fuzzy from the medicine to hear his lecture properly, how she shouldn’t have chased the unsub on her own, that she could have been hurt worse. She falls asleep sometime after 4 am in her hotel room, Hotch sitting on the couch, watching.
The fourth Sunday morning is by accident. They’re on a case and it’s late in the night, bleeding closer to early morning as they pour over files. She’s starting the bad coffee maker in the sweltering precinct when she realises they’re the only ones awake. The rest of the team are in various stages of coiled and curled in corners, faces on files or jackets wedged into makeshift pillows.
He’s taken his suit jacket off, his tie is loose around his neck as he reads the file. Emily has put up and taken down her hair a dozen times, feeling stiff and sticky in the southern heat. She makes him a coffee as well, placing it quietly on the desk before she returns to her own stack of files, pictures of horror that don’t make her flinch anymore.
“I need some air” He says quietly after more time has passed, the whirr of the useless air conditioner the only sound in the dim room. He leaves the cramped room without another word. Emily follows him on instinct, the night is complete in its blackness.
“This weather is disgusting” She comments casually, the outside sweltering in the dark, the air so thick she can almost taste it.
“Better than being stuck in the snow” he replies, leaning against the building, tilting his face to the clear sky, watching the blinking of a plane far overhead.
“Really? I’d rather be caught in a snowstorm than this… soup, any day” She replies.
They stand in silence again, watching the insects gathering at the lights outside, colliding and flying into each other, ricocheting to the ground.
The silence was broken with Dave sticking his head out the door.
“The kids got something” he said, his voice scratchy with sleep.
The fifth Sunday morning is on the way to another case. Called in the middle of the night they are all grumpy and tired on the long flight, the team falling into thick naps at 3 am their arrival not slated until after 7 am. This time its Hotch that realises they’re the only ones awake, both of them sitting in the anxiety that comes with a spree killer, knowing they won’t be able to stop more people getting hurt.
This time it's he that makes coffee, brings it to her and sits next to her as he watches her bite her cuticles, staring at the inky sky outside the window.
“We can’t do anything until we get there” He said softly, pulling her arm down away from her face. Immediately she starts to bounce her leg, the frantic energy finding its way to her knee as she jiggles it up and down.
“Distract me” She says, her voice threaded with anxiety.
He tells her stories about Jack, growing fast, how he still can’t pronounce the word ‘spaghetti’ but lengthy Latin dinosaur names roll off his tongue like poetry. He watches as her leg stills, listening to this rare insight into his personal life, the image of him in sweats and pyjamas as he plays with his son.
“I can’t picture you without a suit” she says, her voice lower in the orange glow of the plane.
“Really?” he says and his eyebrow twitches.
It’s been more than half a year and they had pretended until that moment that it didn’t happen. That blowing off steam and too many shots and Hotch having just signed divorce papers didn’t make them crash together, an accident so sudden neither of them saw it coming. It washed over them like a wave in the silence, the hazy blurry memories of his hand on her ribs, her lips on his chest, the sheets they twisted between each other, frenzied for a mutual release.
“I should apologise for that…” He starts, feeling stirrings of guilt somewhere deep in his gut.
“Don’t. It wasn’t an accident” She said, her voice sounding far away.
“Wasn’t it?”
“Well… it wasn’t a mistake anyway. I don’t regret it” She nodded to herself. “Don’t remember much of it, but I don’t regret it”
He smiled, the fuzzy outline of her lips parted in a gasping cry slipping in his brain unwarranted.
“I don’t regret it either” He admitted. And it was true, too drunk and clumsy though it had been, crawling beneath each other's skin had made him come back to himself, touch base again with reality that he had not lost everything. He was grateful to her for that if nothing else.
Emily settled then, sufficiently distracted from the impending case, sipping at her coffee as they sat in comfortable silence.
“You ever think about it?” She asked, eyes determined on the black coffee swirling in front of her.
Hotch clenched his jaw. He did think about it, more often than he was willing to admit. She came to him in dreams, in private moments in the shower. He had no firm memory to grasp onto so his mind filled the blanks in, the curve of her hip under his hand, her lips parting to bite his lip, thumb, the pull of her fingers on his pants. The way she fell apart beneath him, writhing and whispering his name.
“Do you?” he asked when he thought the silence had become too absolute, too long.
“Yes” She said.
Dave snored and the silence cracked like a glacier. They sprung apart from one another, guilty tension hanging in the chasm between their bodies.
The sixth Sunday is on purpose. She had called him late on Saturday night, antsy and wired after a case that had ended poorly. There was no blame to be laid at anyone’s feet, just a bloody end to a terrible crime, a forced shooting and unsatisfying platitudes. She had ranted through the phone, her voice rising and falling in hopeless waves.
“Do you want me to come over?” he had asked, suddenly and abruptly.
She had fallen silent so long he had wondered if she was offended if he had misread the long glances they had shared in the last weeks.
“Yes” she breathed.
This time, he knew the memories would be burned so sharp into his mind he would never forget it. He could convince himself it had been a selfless gesture, a person to talk to, a warm body in her empty apartment, that he hadn’t offered to come over for this reason.
But she had kissed his neck before he said hello, and the scent of her hair was as much an aphrodisiac as he had ever experienced. It was another collision, lips and tongues and teeth together as they spoke no further. He allowed himself to memorise the smaller details, her pupils blown wide as he buried himself inside her, chased her release before he would allow himself his own.
After, they lay in her bed, exhausted and half asleep. He pressed a kiss onto her spine as she rolled onto her stomach.
“Are we going to pretend this didn’t happen too?” She asked, her voice hesitant and soft.
“If you want to” He said, feeling the pull in his stomach he associated with a lie.
The argument happened on their ninth Sunday together. The whole team drawn and exhausted, no leads in a dead-end case, frustration was simmering on a boilerplate.
Emily exploded first, anger bursting out of her like a geyser, a papercut finally sending her over the edge. She directed it at nothing until he told her to calm down, which worked as well as a cup of water on a bushfire. The team only watched in stunned silence as she shouted herself hoarse at him, all manner of filthy names coming out her mouth as he stood, looking almost bored at her tirade.
“Are you quite finished?” he asked, the voice of a dad watching a tantrum, haughty and arrogant as he folded his arms to look at her.
When she left the room with a hissed profanity he followed her, telling the rest of the team to get back to work. He knew as he walked the halls looking for her that Derek or JJ would be calling Penelope, relaying what they had just witnessed.
He found her in a supply closet, counting breaths. When he closed the door behind him, the soft click made her look up.
“I’m sorry” She said immediately, and she looked it.
“I know” He said, “Please don’t ever curse like that around my son”
She laughed, and that had been all he wanted. He watched the tension leak from her shoulders as she relaxed, letting out a slow breath.
Emily found it strange he didn’t scold her, didn’t follow her to lecture or yell back. Instead, it seemed he followed her to ensure her safety, make sure she was okay, that the frustration had not drowned her in its completion, that she was still willing to fight.
Stranger still was the way it made her chest ache.
“Come on” he said and grabbed her hand to lead her back to the team.
The first time he woke beside her on a Sunday morning was during a snowstorm. A blanket of white whipped outside his bedroom window, the light weak against the torrent of snow. She was wearing his shirt and her hand had slipped beneath his own, resting lightly on his hip. He wondered why they had bothered with pyjamas, so new this thing was they couldn’t keep their hands to themselves. They had dinner, just the two of them and hadn’t made it to dessert.
She had stuttered the request for a date at his office door, uncharacteristic in her shyness, and he found the blockage in his throat hard to talk around as he nodded he agreement. Their first official date had lasted almost twelve hours, lunch turned into the park turned into dinner turned into more coffee. They had fallen twisted in her sheets, a different kind of collision, slow and lazy as though they had nowhere else to be.
He woke her with a kiss, gentle on her neck as she groaned softly, slow to wake. He followed the curve to her jaw as she shifted further backwards, tilting her head to expose the pulse in her throat.
“Wh- time isit?” Came her voice from somewhere muffled in a pillow. He felt himself smile into her skin as she reached back, pulling him by the hip closer to her.
“Early” He said, hearing a small whine escape her lips “It’s snowing, look” He continued, nudging her lightly.
Her face lit up when she saw it, he could almost see it reflected in her pupils, the flurrying mass outside his window. He buried his face deeper into her neck, her hair on his cheek as he wrapped his arms around her waist, slipped his hand beneath her clothing to feel her skin, soft and warm. She rolls into him, slipping the shirt off herself as she straddles his waist.
“It’s early, so I can take my time” she says, and her hair is soft and curling over her shoulders as she leans down to kiss him, his hands sliding across her hips and ribs as he marvels at the feel of her above him.
Aaron talks about Hayley on a Sunday morning. They’re hiding under bedcovers again, both of them treating the confines of a bed like a sanctuary, the secret place they had to themselves.
The words slip from him like water as he tells her stories of Jack as a baby, which morph into stories of Hayley, and the early days of happiness he thought he would never feel again. He worries he’s talking too much, that this honest expression of his love for her will make her stiffen, roll away from him.
Instead, she curls tighter into him, traces patterns with her fingers on his palm and whispers “More”
When he’s exhausted his litany of tales, she responds. She tells him of Rome and Matthew and explains why that case made her feel like shattered glass. She’s pleased he doesn’t react as though she’s fragile.
They talk of absent mothers, and abusive fathers and spill secrets into the pillows, toss them back and forth as they open further, cocooned in the warmth. When he tells her he sometimes worries he learned the wrong lessons from his father she kisses his lower lip to silence him. She tells him he didn’t have to learn anything from his dad, because the love that lives deep in his bones will always win out over those worse instincts.
The first time she tells him she loves him is a Sunday. Its breakfast and she’s stayed over, showered and carefully dressed so Jack won’t know she spent the night, because she said it still feels weird. Jack loves her, he clings to her whenever she’s near and she whispers secrets to him that make him laugh loud enough for Aarons ears to ring. Its when he hands her a plate of strawberries, cut as delicately as Jacks she bites her lip and forces it out.
“I love you” she says, and it's soft and quiet and he could have almost missed it if she didn’t turn scarlet. He had wrapped his hand into her hair, kissed her as though she was made of smoke and told her
“I’ve always loved you”
Its been a year and another Sunday morning in bed when he asks her what kind of ring she’d want one day. He stresses one day because the thought of her rejection of the idea makes him hurt in places he didn’t know existed.
“Something old” she replies, and her tone is its own question, hesitant and unsure if he’s serious.
He nods and tucks this knowledge away in his cheek, slipping hands beneath her pyjamas, now having their own drawer. The house has photos of them too, Jack on her shoulders as he reaches for apples to pick. The team together, a kiss on new years eve.
He likes that she hates wearing pants. She never wears them at home, preferring his old academy shirts and nothing as she cooks breakfast most mornings. She had moved in without warning, neither of them realising that she lived there until she did. That his closet hung with suits cut for men and women and sometimes she put his shirts on by accident. That sometimes she wore his suit shirts on purpose, because she likes the way his eyes glaze over when he sees her in nothing but a white button-down.
When she’s sick on a Sunday morning he forces her to the couch. She protests as much as she can with a fever and a headache and gives in finally when he tells her to stand on her own. Its Jack that brings her orange juice, carrying a cup carefully with two hands, he asks her what movie she wants to watch. He force-feeds her Tylenol, checks her temperature on the hour and after he has put Jack to bed he slips behind her in a cool bath, rests her head on his shoulder and encourages her to sleep.
When he catches the flu from her and spends the next week in bed she teases him relentlessly, all the while pressing a cold cloth to his forehead, kissing his lips and cheeks each time his stomach rolls, rubs his back when he coughs in the night.
She makes him feel peaceful.
He asks her on a Sunday morning. Well actually, Jack asks her, because he can't seem to figure out how to say the words right. He thought of skywriting, a baseball big screen, a fancy dinner, a quiet walk but none of it seems right. But in the end, its Jack who asks her. They’re making breakfast, or really, making a mess of the kitchen because Jack and powdered sugar is a disaster waiting to happen. His kitchen looks like its been snowing in the middle of summer and its as inexplicable as she is. He watches as she kisses Jack’s nose, swipes sugar through his hair as they dust fruit and pancakes.
“Daddy wants to ask you to marry him you know” Jack said, so matter of fact it made him freeze. “Heard him tellin’ Uncle Dave he didn’t know how”
Emily smiled at him, the mischief only edged out by joy. Jack hasn’t seen him standing there, he doesn’t know his dad is listening.
“Really?” Emily said, with mock surprise. “Well, what do you think he should do?”
“S’always tellin’ me to be brave” Jack says, shrugging his shoulders as he plants his fingers in the pancake batter, popping a bubble. “I think he should jus be brave”
The last Sunday they don’t see each other until the afternoon. He wonders about this part because it's only the team and Rossi’s backyard, and how much time can it possibly take to put on a dress? But when he sees her it makes sense. She’s luminous against the setting sun, her smile nervous as she carries wildflowers to meet him. They whisper words to each other as the sky streaks watercolours of pink and orange. The team dances and cheers them and covers them in flower petals and champagne. Eventually, they’re exhausted, finally finding a silent moment in the giant home to be together, alone for the first time all day. She leans against a wall, crumpling the dress in a way that would make Penelope cry but she doesn’t care.
“You promised you wouldn’t curse in your vows” He says as she closes her eyes.
“How is I love you so fucking much a curse?” She says and he can see the smirk beneath the soft makeup.
“Jacks going to repeat that for weeks” he replies, reaching over to grab her hand, unwilling to be so close to not touch her.
“I know” She says, sinking herself further into his embrace. “Told you, we should have just gone to the courthouse”
“And miss seeing you in this dress? Not a chance” He replies, tilting her face to his so he can kiss her, tasting champagne on her tongue as he holds her closer, feels her hands slip beneath his suit jacket in a familiar way. He’s found the pulse in her throat with his lips and she’s let out a soft moan when they’re interrupted.
“Oi! Lovebirds, Honeymoon hasn’t started yet, get back here!” Derek’s voice is loud as he rounds the corner, a bottle of very expensive champagne in his hand as he drinks directly from it.
Emily sighs, looking up at Aaron who is clenching his jaw.
“Come on, we’ve got the rest of our lives to finish this” she says, leading him by the hand to dance.