Work Text:
“This is SSA Emily Prentiss.” She’s trying to wrap up her paperwork for the afternoon. Not that anything thus far is going according to plan. She’s about thirty minutes from just texting her husband and telling him that there’s no way she’s making it home in time for hot passionate sex and Jurassic Park when she gets a call. It’s to her office phone so she’s assuming it’s not Aaron calling to whine that she hasn’t left yet.
The voice on the other line is unfamiliar. “Hi, ma’am,” the voice greets. “I’m calling in regards to your husband, Aaron Hotchner.” That immediately strikes Emily as strange. Hotch hasn’t worked for the better part of the last year. Calls have pretty much stopped coming for him and even the ones that do don’t connect her to him in regards to their marriage.
“Your husband suffered a cardiac arrest this afternoon–”
Shock factor aside, she doesn’t drop the phone. She’s gotten all kinds of awful news over the phone. Stories about babies being mutilated and killed. Women being raped and tortured. This is… They can’t be compared. They’re not at all the same. Hearing those awful harrowing things does nothing to dull the way her throat gets tight.
The voice drones on and Emily’s barely, if at all, able to keep herself together.
“Saint Sebastian,” she repeats back to the woman on the other end. The same hospital Foyet left him at.
The other woman on the line hums an affirmation. She keeps talking. Something about the ICU and visiting hours but Emily already knows she’s going into that hospital, guns blazing with her badge for everyone to see. Aaron was FBI and all it takes is one phone call to the right people and she can get anything she wants.
And right now all she wants is her husband.
“Bella–” she looks up, blinking away tears she hadn’t realized were falling. Dave is standing in her doorway, pulling his hands out of his pockets as he gets a full view of her shaking body. “Emily, what’s wrong?” Whatever it is that he’d wanted it thrown out the door as he moves to her side.
She stares down at the phone in her hands.
Retirement was supposed to mean he’s safe.
“Aaron had a heart attack.”
Matt and Luke only know Aaron from brief interactions.
Given that the couple has lunch together frequently, an easy way to make up the time they’ve spent apart and a good excuse for Hotch to get out of the house, the team sees a lot of him. He rarely speaks once he hits the doors, offering friendly nods to Tara, Reid, JJ, Garcia, or Dave. Matt had only just found himself on the receiving end of one of those nods. After the two men spent an afternoon at Dave’s bonding over chaotic sons.
Luke just gets a flat look. It brings Garcia deep joy that Luke is willing to do just about anything to get a nod from Hotch and her old boss won’t give him the time of day.
They don’t really know Hotch but they understand how important he is to the others.
It takes Emily a moment to find the nerve to speak the words. To tell the other’s what has happened. Her hands are trembling at her sides and tears are threatening to fall. She won’t let them, not yet. It’s no surprise that the other’s don’t hold back.
They don’t really know Hotch but they know how important he is to Emily. They’ve all heard his voice on the other end of a line, comforting Emily as she sits as far as she can from the others on the jet. They’ve come home to find him standing in the bullpen, standing silent and still for as long as Emily wants in a bearhug.
Matt is the first person to make a noise other than stifling sobs or muffled gasps. He offers her a small, comfortable smile, “I can drive you.”
Emily nods and forces herself to swallow against the panic bubbling up her chest. “Uhm okay,” she can work with that. “Pen?” Garcia looks up. “I need you and Luke to go to my house and get Jack and a bag for Aaron.” Emily spaces for a moment… What else do they need? How long will he even be in the hospital? She doesn’t even know how bad he is–
“Hotch still keeps a go-bag,” Dave continues. “It’ll be right by the door.” He waits for the nods that mean they understand. “Good,” he surmises. “Reid, JJ, Tara– stay here. Hold the fort down.” He takes Emily around the shoulders, guiding her to the elevator. He can feel her tension, can see her fear.
He can’t find it within himself to put aside his own fear to comfort her.
That’s his kid.
These are his kids.
The pair are stopped before they get too far in the cardiac ward.
Matt’s waiting in the parking lot, waiting for a text from Dave.
They only allow her back. His condition is critical and it’s borne out of the admission that his cardiac output is worrisome. It’s not severe but it needs to be steadily monitored for the next day, maybe longer. For now, they don’t even want Emily back there but badges and the tears streaming down her face buy her one ticket back.
He’s sleeping.
Out of habit, she draws the blankets around his waist to his chin. He gets cold when he’s sleeping. His body heats everything around him like a furnace but he likes the feeling of the weight of the blanket across his chest. Without it, he shivers. She can’t be certain if he’s actually cold but what she does know is that he won’t rest well if he’s not able to wrap his lean body around her own like a cat.
Docile.
He sleeps for hours and she does her best to distract herself as best as she can. It works, more or less.
“I was wondering when you’d get here.”
She looks up from her book to find him staring back at her. She moves closer to him, book forgotten. It’s fine, she wasn’t really reading it anyway. She could get as far as a paragraph before she became distracted by nearly anything in the room. Her thoughts just kept drifting back to him. To what it would mean to lose him.
And she nearly did.
For a moment she’s struck as to which personality she’s to show. The doting wife who warned him? She did. Over and over, more a mantra than a proper warning, but every day they had this conversation. Not so much coffee. Go to be bed earlier. Stop worrying over small things.
The partner? They haven’t been to that level in some time. It’s a shield they’d worn during Foyet and Doyle. Partners. Much more of a, “I told you” than a proper “I almost lost you”. It allowed them the proximity they craved from one another while keeping up a friendly rouse for the others. Besides the notion that neither were prepared to admit their feelings.
Or can she just be scared?
A terrified wife. Not a unit chief. Not the work equivalent of a best friend. Just a wife.
“Em,” his hand trembles on the bed where he lays it. Palm up and waiting for her to take it. She does. Her own hand much softer than his and for a moment, she just sits and rubs her hand against his. Thinking about what it would mean to slowly forget the way it feels to hold his hand.
She collects herself slowly. Just having him close is doing the job pretty well. She has to stand up to reach him but she presses her hips against the guardrail and leans down, cupping his cheek in her hand as she kisses him. Despite her best efforts, she starts to cry.
Their lips are still pressed together when the first tear falls, Hotch feels it hit his face. “Em,” it’s all he can do remain where he is. The pain he feels in his chest the moment he lifts his shoulders is overwhelming. A strangled sound leaves his mouth, his body tensing. It’s overwhelming for a moment too long and as the black clouds in his vision fade away he realizes he’s simply made it worse.
The feeling of her cold hand in his.. nearly lost forever.
“You have to take it easy,” she admonishes gently. She simply doesn’t have the heart or the energy to fuss with him right now. Not when all she wants is to hold him in her arms. And how long will she have to wait for that? Before he can lay on his stomach and rest across her chest. To be held and loved within her arms.
The bags under his eyes are worse than they ever were when he was an agent but the smile on his face comes easily. They can deny and fight it all they want but retirement has been kind to him. It’s made him happier. “Emily,” he whispers her name the same way he always has. His chest caving in like he’s in shock that a name like hers can be spoken by a man like him. “Can’t a husband fake a cardiac arrest so that his gorgeous wife can come to rescue him? Huh?”
She tuts, shaking her head and looking away from him. She hates his stupid humor and more than that she hates that he’s joking. That he’s trying to cheer her up.
“You haven’t been paying me any attention,” he pouts and she’s amazed to find that’s where Jack gets it from. “What was I to do, my love?”
My love.
That bastard.
She leans back against the guard rail, the metal digging into her hips painfully. “Well,” she returns, “how about you try asking your gorgeous wife to lunch, hmm?” She strokes back a strand of his peppered hair. He’s going to make a very good silver fox. “Or,” she adds, “you can take me to dinner. No more cardiac arrests, though, okay? Dramatic flares have never really been my thing.”
He reaches between them and rests a trembling palm against her cheek, his eyes darting between hers. “Promise,” he whispers and they both know that it’s not that simple but it’s a start.
“Do you,” she leans down and kisses him, pulling back so that their lips still brush as she speaks. “Do you, also, promise to behave for the physical therapist, nutritionist, and cardiologist?”
He groans.
“Aaron,” she warns.
He grumbles, rolls his eyes, but nods. “I’ll behave.”
She kisses him, “good.” She runs a finger over his cheekbone, “I love you.”
“I love you, too.”