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ID
She challenges Reid to name all of the different varieties of potatoes, as they drive past sprawling fields in Idaho.
Hotch plugs his iPod into the car stereo and blasts Bruce Springsteen to drown out the noise of the two agents in the back. She catches his eye in the rearview mirror and he just shakes his head, exasperated.
MT
It’s offensively hot in Montana when he throws her a bottle of water, the condensation seeping through her shirt where she catches it against her chest.
She takes a few deep breaths before taking a long drink and passing the bottle to Morgan.
NH
“I see this in your future,” Emily tells him, walking over to where Hotch stands, his arms folded.
There is a park across from the Laconia Police Department and a bunch of young kids are playing Soccer, parents lining the sides of the pitch.
“I was thinking little league, if it’s something that he wants,” Hotch replies.
Emily is momentarily taken aback, she thought her friendly comment would be shot down, especially on an active case. “Nah,” she replies, “soccer is way more fun to watch if you want all of us to come and cheer him on at some ungodly hour on a Saturday.”
He realises that he would want nothing more, than for his work family to be a bigger part of Jack’s life.
NE
In Nebraska he knows that he trusts her.
She can feel it too. His watchful eye has shifted from being apprehensive to sure.
Emily finds that she likes his gaze upon her, but doesn’t dig deeper into why.
ME
“I like it here,” she tells him as they stand on the shore.
“Maine in general or this particular lake?” He asks.
“Both,” she replies with a smile.
He raises an eyebrow in response, “Even though we just dragged a body out of the water?”
MO
She wakes early and restless in St. Louis, 5:05 AM staring back at her on the alarm clock like a taunt. She thinks she hears movement from through the wall and rises to knock on their adjoining door.
30 minutes later they’re both out of breath and grinning, an early morning jog in a new city, something that has been helping to ground him over the last few months. Though it’s never just a jog when Prentiss joins him, egging him on, pushing him until they’re sprinting through the city together, feeling the rush of serotonin he knew he wouldn’t be experiencing if she were not by his side.
Hotch places an arm on her shoulder in thanks as they stand beneath the Gateway Arch waiting for the sun to rise.
NJ
“I’m really going to need you to either stop or learn more than three lines of that song.” Hotch tells her as they drive along the Atlantic City Expressway.
She covers her mouth with both hands, glances to her left to see his eternally placid expression as he grips the wheel. “I was singing?” She asks, embarrassed.
“Humming mostly, but yes.”
“I don’t even know what it was.”
“You were butchering the Sopranos theme tune,” he replies.
She turns to look out the window, folding her arms across her chest, feeling the weight of the silence on them.
Hotch flicks the radio on and within a few songs it's him humming along. She rolls her eyes, tips her head back against the headrest and smiles.
OK
There are horses at their Bed and Breakfast in Oklahoma, she settles herself down on the back porch with some case files, but they’re mostly just a ruse for the peace and quiet she craves.
He joins her after a while, passing her a diet coke, and settles down into the silence next to her, flipping through one of the files she has placed on the patio table.
She barely acknowledges him, accepts the drink and goes back to watching the animals.
MI
“I need you to know,” he begins, once they are alone in the interrogation room in Detroit.
She turns to him, a blank expression on her face as she rolls her neck, shaking the tension out.
“I need you to know that I don’t take you for granted, when I send you into these rooms with these men, it isn’t just because you’re a woman.”
She interrupts him then, “Hotch don’t…”
“No,” he continues, “you are very good at your job Prentiss, and I’m sorry that this is a recurring theme.”
“Don’t worry about it boss,” she replies, making to leave the room. She turns and places her hand on his shoulder, he stiffens almost imperceptibly but she notices, of course she does. “I’ve given more of myself to cases than this.”
He nods and watches her leave, wondering how this could be true.
MA
She’s quiet in Boston. It’s their second time in the city on a case and he notices the way she separated herself from the conversation on the jet, the way she picks the skin on her right thumb.
He lets it be, knows all too well the sense memory of a place, how street signs can haunt you.
TX
She had smuggled what he could only imagine is almost the entire contents of the mini bar from her room in Houston.
They’re on the jet, and it’s late, when she announces that she has presents for everyone.
She throws a miniature of Bacardi to Morgan, who thanks her but remarks, “isn’t everything supposed to be bigger in Texas?”
Emily laughs and continues passing out bottles: Bombay Sapphire to JJ, a can of Canada Dry to Reid. She places the Campari in front of Rossi, and Hotch waits for whatever is about to be bestowed upon him.
“Close your eyes,” she says to him, knowing fine well that she has everyone's attention.
She pulls the last two bottles from her bag and places them behind her back, one in each hand.
“Okay, open ‘em and pick a hand.” She tells him.
“Left,” he replies, trying to keep the amusement out of his tone.
“God dammit,” she groans, handing him the bottle of Jim.
She unscrews the tiny cap on the Jaeger that remains in her right hand, grimaces and downs the whole thing.
JJ whoops and Emily dramatically bows before pulling out another tiny bottle of tequila and flopping down on the couch.
PA
She buys him a Snickers from a gas station near Reading, drops it into his lap when she slides back into the driver's seat.
“The coffee looked bad,” she tells him, “and you seemed like you could use a boost.”
AR
After the case is wrapped, they head back to the station to gather their things.
“I’ve decided,” Emily announces in Little Rock, “that these are the best donuts I’ve ever had.” She waves it above her head in triumph as the team laughs.
The police chief beams and raises a donut of his own to cheers hers.
She looks cute, he thinks, with powdered sugar on her nose.
AK
They lie awkwardly in their respective twin beds in Alaska.
She makes a comment of incredulity, why would there need to be a ceiling fan in their room?
He snorts out his laughter, shocked through the silence by her words. They laugh together in the darkness. He notes, not for the first time, how much he loves the sound of her laugh.
VT
The rain is lashing down as they run for cover into their hotel for the night in Burlington.
He knocks on her door an hour after they have gotten settled, doing the rounds to let the team know what time they’d be heading to the precinct in the morning.
She smiles and nods, her door only open a crack, deciding it isn’t smart to let her boss see her standing in a towel.
Though she’ll go to bed that night and her last waking thought will be the way his hair slightly curls out from behind his ears when it gets wet.
IL
In Chicago, she’s on a mission to find a pierogi place she’d eaten at years before. Reid tells her of the statistical improbability of the restaurant still being operational due to the neighbourhood and the economic impacts on the area.
She rolls her eyes and sets off with Morgan.
When they return to the hotel 30 minutes later, laden down with take-out boxes, she does a little victory dance, thrusting a box of dumplings in the younger agent’s face.
Hotch tries his best not to notice where her shirt has ridden up while she celebrates.
IA
“You cut your hair,” he tells her in Des Moines.
She spends the next few days running her hands absentmindedly through it, until Morgan quips that she looks like a teenage girl.
LA
“I’d have had a lot of fun in this city when I was younger,” she laments to him in New Orleans, sipping a diet coke in their hotel bar.
“If you stop pouting about not being able to drink on the job I’ll buy you a beignet,” he offers, and she jumps down from her stool in delight.
“A night of sugary debauchery awaits,” she grins, as she follows him out onto the streets of the French Quarter.
KY
He has new sunglasses in Kentucky and she finds herself staring.
Had the cut of his jaw always looked like that?
WA
In Seattle they go to a bar on their last night, deciding to wait until morning to return to Quantico.
It had been a brutal case, a manhunt that had exhausted all of them.
Sometimes they drink after a case for the jubilation, tonight they are drinking just to feel a little bit less.
Well that was his plan, until she walks into the bar wearing red.
WV
“I like driving with you,” Emily comments somewhere on I77, “you don’t get restless the way that Morgan does, and you don’t need to fill the silence like Reid.”
Hotch gently quirks his lips into a smile, and nods a quiet, “thank you.”
He has to muster the strength from deep in his chest in order to not to pay her the same compliment back.
It’s because he’s scared that he’ll replace the word ‘driving’ with ‘being’, and doesn’t trust himself not to slip up.
MS
They get lost in Mississippi, the GPS cutting out, desperately trying to find a signal.
She’s relaxed, shrugs and smiles, figures they’ll find their way back to the team, they always do.
He realises that he really likes being lost with Emily Prentiss.
OH
He holds her as she cries in Ohio.
She’s keeping score of the states her trauma has followed her to, hopping over the plains from California all the way to her hotel room in Cleveland.
There was just too much blood on that case.
Her nightmares are infrequent, her go bag meticulously packed, ‘there’s a pill for that,’ the quip from her lips when Penelope asks her about lingering nightmares.
But tonight she found herself knocking on his door at 2AM, a fist full of bawled up tissues and the last shreds of her professional dignity.
He kisses her forehead as her breathing evens out, and she wonders about the healing properties of lips on skin, of the rationalization he will have done in his head to cross their invisible line with the tiniest brush of his lips.
IN
Emily helps him pick out a vintage matchbox car for Jack in Indianapolis.
There’s a Goodwill near their hotel and she accompanies him while the rest of the team breaks for lunch.
She asks him Jack’s favourite colour, watches the change in him when he begins to speak animatedly about his son.
Files away the knowledge that she can get his dimples to pop out at the mention of his little boy.
CO
He kisses her in Colorado.
She whimpers, and he panics, thinks it’s from the pain, chides himself, she’s battered and bruised.
When he pulls away she grabs the back of his head with more force than either of them can believe she has in the moment, opens her mouth to his and sighs against his lips.
The whimper, he realises belatedly, was desperation, and doesn’t he know that feeling well?
AZ
She doesn’t understand why anyone would want to live in the desert.
He knows that he is supposed to agree with her, complain about the weather, after all he is sweating through his shirt, but that’s not where his thoughts lie.
Not when she stands with her hands on her hips, in a dark tank top, with her hair tied up. He loves her like this.
NC
She sees his scars for the first time in Charlotte.
Skates her fingers lightly across his abdomen, watches his muscles clench, half in self defence, half in fear.
“Beautiful,” she murmurs, leaning down to kiss his chest, places her lips lovingly upon marks left by frenzied rage.
He’s holding himself still, holding his breath, but the longer she spends with his body in places he’s guarded so closely against the eyes of others, he feels himself relax.
She’s undoing him, she is his undoing, but he already knew that.
AB
“I don’t really know what we’re doing,” she admits on the threshold of his hotel room in Birmingham. “But I don’t want to stop.”
He opens his door fully for her, and steps out of the way so she can walk inside.
NV
In Vegas they’re all tipsy, sharing dessert in a hotel buffet.
If you asked any of them which hotel they’re in, there’s doubt that they could tell you, that’s what happens when Reid doesn’t join them.
But Penelope is here, and they all have another mixed drink in front of them again. JJ is trying to get everyone to taste a piece of her chocolate brownie, but Hotch ignores the rest of the team, completely enraptured by the perfect knot in the cherry stem sitting on Emily’s tongue.
She laughs, gleefully and he shakes his head in return, schooling his features into a stern expression in the hope that she isn’t encouraged by his attention.
UT
They shower together in Utah, washing the dust of the desert from their skin.
When he kisses her neck and wraps his arms around her from behind, she feels like forever.
It doesn’t scare him the way he thinks it should.
FL
“I hate this state,” Emily grumbles over a beer in the bar they’re currently doing surveillance in. She rests her head in her hands pouting, before taking a swig from her glass.
JJ raises hers in agreement, but he just shakes his head. “Oh come on Hotch,” JJ begins, “well all know that nothing good ever happens in Florida.”
He thinks about Emily sneaking out of his hotel room that very morning, one of his shirts wrapped around her frame and he nods but doesn’t say anything, forces himself not to flicker his eyes across the table to the other female agent.
TN
They hold hands under a blanket on the flight back from Nashville.
Everyone else has drifted off to sleep, Emily included, her fingers twitch against his palm but she doesn’t let go.
NM
The AC is broken in New Mexico. She finds him napping in one of the SUVs, cold air blasting in the car.
She taps on the glass to rouse him, and when he rolls the window down she leans in for a kiss. He pulls back suddenly, gesturing to the back seat.
Emily doesn’t have enough time to be affronted by his rejection because she’s suddenly stifling laughter at the sight of Reid stretched out along the backseat, snoring softly.
WY
The sunrise in Yellowstone takes her breath away.
She tells him that it is even more spectacular than watching it from a hot air balloon in Cappadocia.
He tells her that for him, it is spectacular because he’s experiencing it with her.
She knows then, that without a shadow of a doubt, she’s screwed.
KS
“How long have you been in love with her?” Dave asks in Wichita as they watch Emily gently lead a grieving family into one of the meeting rooms at the precinct.
He knows that he is caught, profiler out profiled.
The only thing left is the truth.
“A while,” Aaron replies, turning on his heel and walking in the opposite direction.
CA
“You love him, don’t you?” Derek asks in their hotel bar in San Francisco.
Emily runs her finger around the rim of her wine glass, staring into the depths of the Merlot.
She nods her head gently.
“Oh Prentiss,” Derek sighs.
And she’s taken aback, by the empathy in his tone, there’s no bite.
“You’re okay with it, with us?” She asks.
“You’re my sister,” he replies simply, “and for the first time in a long time I don’t feel like I need to protect you.”
ND
“You know, Reid told me that North Dakota is the least visited state in the contiguous US,” Emily muses, walking out of his hotel bathroom towel drying her hair.
“Interesting,” he replies absentmindedly, his head buried in a case file.
“I know how to make it more interesting,” Emily tells him.
She receives no response, not even his usual ‘hmm’ that she expects while he is reading.
She knows that she has his attention with the sound of her towel hitting the floor.
OR
There are 37 left, she advises him one night in their hotel room in Salem, with absolutely no context.
She leans over and brushes her lips against his lightly, “states you need to kiss me in,” Emily responds as she pulls back.
WI
They collect on their winnings in Madison, shortly after she says “fuck it,” and wraps her arms around his neck in front of the whole team, pulling him in for a deep kiss.
Aaron finds out from Dave that the wager had been who could get Emily to admit that they were in a relationship, and since she had decided to ‘announce’ it to them all at once, she successfully argues that she deserves all of their money.
It is promptly spent on a bottle of tequila for the table.
SC
“It’s really beautiful here,” Emily says, squeezing his hand in hers as they walk along The Battery in Charleston.
His response is soft, out of his mouth before he even realises he had words to say, “You’re really beautiful.”
SD
“I love you,” he whispers into her hair in his hotel room in Rapid City.
She rolls over, places her palm gently on his cheek, schools her features and replies, “I know,” before rolling back onto her side.
He is shocked for a moment, of all the responses he was ready for, this was not one of them. Then he hears her quiet laughter, the shake of the bed, until she is laughing heartily.
“I thought it would be funny, but it’s cooler when Leia does it, plus I really love you too.” Emily tells him, leaning in for a kiss.
GA
He lets her have a lie in, their last morning in Atlanta.
It had been one of those cases where she had given so much of herself.
He’s plating up some breakfast for her on a paper plate when he bumps into Morgan in the breakfast room of their hotel.
“Is that for Em?” Morgan asks, Aaron nods.
“At least throw a waffle on there for her, she’s earned it.”
HI
“You’ve never taken me to Hawaii,” she laments one evening at home, mixing him a drink.
“I didn’t know that was something bosses were supposed to do,” he replies with a smirk.
She twists the orange peel, drags it around the rim of the glass before popping it inside. Emily hands it to him over the back of the couch, he accepts with an outstretched hand. She leans in then, presses a kiss against his neck, “It’s something boyfriends are supposed to do.”
RI
She plays him Blossom Dearie in Providence, an earphone for each of them as she scrolls through her iPod for the perfect song.
Tells him of the only memory she holds of her Maternal Grandmother, the piano she played.
The keys Emily wasn’t allowed to play, lest she untuned the instrument that was her Grandmother’s pride and joy. But she remembers the feel of the keys, the slight roughness of the ivory, the sleek feeling of the black keys.
“You can play me like an instrument,” he jokes.
“The next time Pen and JJ ask me: ‘Oh Emily, what is he really like when he’s not being the boss?’ I’m going to tell them that you ruined my nice moment of sharing my childhood with you with a lewd comment.”
“They won’t believe you,” he laughs, pulling her into his chest.
Emily sighs and shakes her head, “I know they won’t, it’s infuriating.”
NY
They take a room at the Langham for the night.
“Bubbles,” he had promised her.
She giggles, genuinely giggles when she pops the cork on the bottle of Veuve.
The dark bottle, her dark hair, red nails, the only things visible. The rest of her surrounded by the bubbles in the huge bathtub.
She leans back into his chest and tilts the bottle to his lips. He drinks heartily before his left hand disappears under the water and her laugh becomes a squeak.
CT
She reaches for his hand at the crime scene in Hartford, he squeezes it quickly before making his way through the police tape and up the steps to the house.
It’s a tiny moment of reassurance, to ground him for a fraction of a second before he walks into a house, a deceased family inside, a bike left on the lawn, identical to the one Jack has at home.
She knows he might need her tonight.
DE
He proposes in their hotel room, casually while they lie in bed, surrounded by case files.
“Marry me,” slipping past his lips, no ring in his hand.
She glares at him and rolls her eyes. “You’re not proposing to me in Delaware.”
“But I just did,” he smirks, leaning over to kiss her.
“You’re going to do it properly one day Aaron,” she replies.
She’s right, he is.
VA
He proposes again in Virginia, on the back porch of the house they have just bought together.
She cries, a brand new sensation, happy tears weren’t something that she was ever meant to experience, were they?
It’s perfect.
MD
They take Jack to Annapolis, fuelling his current obsession with boats.
They eat ice cream by the docks in spite of the October chill, and when an elderly woman compliments Emily, telling her how polite her son is when he steps out of the way to let the woman past him, she doesn’t correct the misconception.
She just smiles and thanks her.
MN
He catches her in the hotel gift shop in Minnesota, deliberating over two postcards.
“I like the trees,” he tells her and she jumps, startled by his intrusion into her quiet moment.
“Trees it is then,” she replies, heading towards the register.
He never asks who she is buying it for, she doesn’t offer up an explanation.
It is years later, when sorting through boxes, combining their lives together that he finds them: dozens of postcards from cities all around the country. Emily tells him in a gentle voice, turning them over so he can read her sloped handwriting, that whenever the team saved a child she would mark it in a small way, a reminder of the difference they made across the whole country.
He holds her a little tighter that night, his hand resting on the rounded swell of her stomach.