Work Text:
Emily was quickly learning that Jack Hotchner could talk her into anything. All it would take was a flash of his wide smile, innocence he somehow still maintained despite everything he’d been through pressed into his dimples, and she’d find herself agreeing to whatever he asked of her. It’s how she finds herself watching baseball practice on a Saturday morning, her jacket and the cup of coffee cradled in her hands doing nothing to keep the cold spring air away. She smiles as she watches Aaron do his best to control a bunch of five-year-olds all running wild and barely paying any attention to his instructions.
It was odd to see him in this environment, to see him lose his ability to be commanding, his undoing apparently a gaggle of kindergarteners who were seemingly determined to do anything but learn how to play baseball. He’d admitted to her he wasn’t entirely sure about it, that soccer was more his thing, but Haley had started to take Jack to baseball practice during the time they were in hiding - an activity that got them both out of the small apartment they’d been living in. When Aaron had unpacked Jack’s things when he came home, his clothes two sizes bigger than they had been when he’d left, a Little League uniform had been in amongst them. Since then he’d been determined to give his son whatever normality he could, whatever link, no matter how tenuous, to the mother he’d one day forget more about than he’d ever get to remember.
Jack looks over at Emily, waving enthusiastically as he spots her in the small crowd of parents and family. She smiles and unhooks one of her hands around her coffee to wave back. She presses her lips together to try to hide her smile when Aaron looks over too, a habit she was yet to shake in an attempt to contain her happiness in front of the man who was quickly becoming one of her closest friends. He says something to one of the other parents standing near him and he walks over, his hands deep in his pockets as he fails to cover a shiver.
“You came,” he says, his smile turning into one of relief when she holds up the cup of coffee she’d brought for him, “You’re a lifesaver.”
She hums, “So I’ve been told,” she quips, “And of course I came, you know I can’t say no to that little boy of yours, Hotch,” she says, and he raises an eyebrow at her, a conversation they’d had more than once written in his amused smile, “Sorry, Aaron.”
He sips his coffee and looks over his shoulder when he hears Jack calling for him, and he looks back at Emily, “I’ve been summoned - you’re coming for breakfast afterwards?”
She doesn’t even hesitate before she nods, the thought of more time with both him and Jack enough to make her stomach flutter in a way it hadn’t in a long time, “Of course.”
It seemed that Jack wasn’t the only Hotchner she had difficulty saying no to.
Somewhere along the way, after they’d tipped from simply being colleagues into friends, she found herself starting to feel more for Aaron. It was absurd, silly in a way that she tried to ignore because she absolutely did not want to fall in love with her boss, but increasingly something she could not ignore. When she found him in the hospital months ago, looking broken and smaller than she thought would be possible for a man who had always seemed so broad, it sparked something low in her gut, feelings that were easy to ignore when his life was unravelling around him, when all he needed was a friend.
She’d made a point of being that friend. She drove him to and from physical therapy appointments, and then work when he insisted on going back. She quietly paid for the hospital bills that his bureau provided insurance did not cover, and wouldn’t accept anything even close to a thank you or an attempt to pay her back when he realised it was her who had done it and not Dave as he’d originally assumed. When Haley died, Emily was his friend then too. She helped with arrangements where he needed help, and even took Jack out shopping to buy the suit he ended up wearing to his mother’s funeral, a small, but devastating, thing she could take off Aaron and Jessica’s plates as they prepared to bury a woman they loved.
It was much easier to be his friend than it was to admit to herself that she wanted so much more than that. She knew she was heading towards having to make a choice, to figure out what role in his life she could bear to play, if friendship would truly be enough in the long run. She’d played happy families before, had occasionally let herself get lost in the fantasy of it all before reality had reared its ugly head and she’d killed a boy to let him live.
She’s distracted by the thought of it, the thought of him and Jack and another little boy with blue eyes she’d once fallen in love with, and when someone yells out duck, she doesn’t, leading to her getting hit square in the face with a baseball.
“Motherfucker.”
The pain crackles from her nose outwards, and she doesn’t capture the curse that escapes when she cups her face with both of her hands. Her vision blurs as she tries to shake off the pain, and she is just about capable of muttering an apology to the fussing mothers sitting around her as they hustle their children away from her just in case she curses again.
“Emily?”
She looks up, groaning when the movement hurts her head even more, and she sees Aaron, with a first aid kit hanging from his hand, and Jack running towards her. In any other circumstances, when she didn’t feel like her nose had been forced back into her skull, she’d find the matching looks of concern on their faces adorable. They end up on either side of her on the bleachers, Jack’s tiny desperate hands on her thigh as he grasps at her jeans, and Aaron’s large, impossibly warm given the cold air, hands on her face.
“ Emily, let me look,” he says, encouraging her to let her hands fall away from her face. He looks at her, the intense concentration on his face that she’d seen countless times at work entirely focused on her. He touches her face so delicately, like she’s made of something fragile, and it makes her suck in a breath, “Sorry if it hurts.”
“It doesn’t,” she says, chuckling humourlessly when he looks at her curiously, “I mean, it does, but you’re not hurting me.”
Aaron nods and looks at her again, his concentration returning in full force as he gently tilts her head side to side, “You’re going to have a hell of a bruise, but it doesn’t look broken.”
“More’s the pity,” she quips, swallowing thickly at the feel of his fingers on her skin, desperately trying to ignore the feeling of loss she feels when he pulls away, “My mom always said I could do with a nose job, it would have been the perfect excuse.”
He furrows his brow, and for a moment she thinks he’s going to say something, that he’s to about argue with her, but he doesn’t get the chance, cut off by Jack’s insistence as he stands up next to Emily so he’s face to face with them.
“Daddy, you have to kiss it better.”
Emily sucks in a laugh, that quickly becomes a wince, at the look on Aaron’s face, the mix of shock and fear making him look nothing short of adorable. She takes pity on him and wraps her arm around Jack to steady him, “It’s okay, sweetie.”
Jack shakes his head, his little brows furrowed together, “No, he has to. Otherwise, it won’t get better.”
She presses her lips together and she turns back to look at Aaron, her eyebrow raised in challenge as she hands this over to him to solve. She watches as he battles with himself, a hundred different ways he could deal with this passing across his face in a matter of seconds.
She isn’t sure if she’s shocked or not when he leans forward, hesitating for only half a second before he kisses the very tip of her nose. It’s like time stops, the warmth of his lips against her skin the only thing she can focus on, a sharp contrast to the chill in the air around them, and it takes everything in her not to shiver. It’s like everything has shifted, like questions she hadn’t known how to ask suddenly had answers to them. He pulls back, his smile apologetic, and she almost reaches out for him, almost wraps her hand around his - their apparent embargo on touching each other beyond a simple hug long gone - and tells him he has nothing to be sorry for, but she’s cut off by Jack.
“There, all better.”
“Yeah,” she mutters, avoiding Aaron’s gaze because of how he is looking at her, as if his life had shifted too, and she looks at Jack instead, the love and awe shining in his eyes easier to accept than his father’s, “All better.”
___
Aaron didn’t think he’d ever been closer to yelling at, or firing, David Rossi.
Going undercover had been his suggestion, as had Aaron and Emily posing as a couple as they did so, something frustratingly close to a smirk on his face as he commented that they looked the most believable together.
The worst part was that Aaron knew he was right and that going undercover was the best way to move forward with the case. They were in a stalemate, and on the clock when it came to another victim being taken from the nightclub the unsub used as his hunting ground, and despite his grumbling over his friend’s suggestion that he went with Emily, Aaron wouldn’t want it any other way. He wouldn’t want her by herself in a situation like that, no matter how much she could handle herself, and he wasn’t sure he could stand back and watch someone else with her either.
His irritation wasn’t based on having to pose as her partner, but on the fact it was temporary, that he would be allowed to, all too briefly, give into how he felt about her for everyone to see.
It had happened slowly, crept up on him until he couldn’t remember how it felt to not be in love with her. For a long time, he’d been able to ignore it, to pretend he was overinflating how he felt about her because she was there, because she’d seemed to make it her own personal mission to get him and Jack through the very worst thing they’d ever been through. Then, spurred on by his son and lured in by the smell of Emily’s perfume, vanilla with an undertone of something a little spicy, Aaron kissed her injured nose before he could tell himself all the reasons why it was a bad idea.
It was like he’d been slammed into, his body still moving with the force of everything he’d pretended he couldn’t and shouldn’t feel for her as she stared at him before turning to look at Jack, the little boy a buffer between the two of them as they tried to recalibrate how they felt. Emily came to breakfast with them as promised and only tried to argue with him once when he insisted that he paid, an apology by way of cups of coffee and pancakes for getting her hurt in the first place.
He steps out of the precinct bathroom and sighs as Derek and Dave look at him with their arms crossed over their chests, looking him up and down whilst they scrutinise his appearance.
“He still looks too much like an agent.”
He places his hands on his hips and sighs, “I am an agent,” he replies, “And I already took off my tie.”
“Lose the jacket too,” Emily says from behind them, fussing with the neckline of her dress as they all turn to look at her, “And roll up your sleeves,” she adds, her eyebrows furrowing as she looks up at them, “What?” He has to clear his throat because it suddenly goes dry, the sight of her in a black dress she’d worn once before in front of him, one she’d changed into after she assured him she was okay flirting with the Viper, that she’d dated worse - something he’d never quite stopped thinking about since. She looks beautiful, her hair skipping across her collarbones as she turns her head to look at JJ standing behind her. “Do I have something in my teeth?”
“No,” Aaron says, talking before he can stop himself, “You look…nice.”
He curses himself for that being the only thing he can think of saying when Dave barely covers a laugh at his expense, something that dies in his throat when Aaron glares at him. He shrugs off his jacket and rolls up his sleeves as Emily had suggested, and she smiles as he does so, her eyes lingering on his forearms as they are revealed to the room.
“You too,” she replies, pressing her lips together and clearing her throat, “Shall we get going?”
He nods, but he’s stopped when Derek hums, his smile teasing as they both look over at them, “I don’t know, I don’t buy it.”
Emily sighs, her arms crossed over her chest, “Don’t buy what?”
“You two,” he says, pointing back and forth between them, “I don’t know if I see you as a couple.”
Dave hums, not put off by the way Emily and Aaron both glare at him, and he nods in agreement, enjoying their discomfort, “He’s right. I think we need to see it.”
Emily scoffs, “See what?”
“You two acting like a couple.”
Aaron is about to reprimand them, to put a stop to their teasing because he doesn’t want Emily to feel uncomfortable, but she’s next to him before he says anything, her arm linked through his before she hugs his arm to her chest, a sarcastic smile spreading across her face as she tilts her head at them.
“Is that good enough?” She asks dryly, squeezing Aaron’s arm in a way he knows is for him, not for them and the game they are playing. It’s an attempt to comfort him, something Haley had done countless times before it all fell apart. Care and affection pressed from her fingers to his bare forearm, her skin impossibly soft against his.
Derek shakes his head, taking one more step, toeing the line of irritating them playfully and actually pissing them off, “Still not sure.”
Emily scoffs and she rolls her eyes before she pulls away from Aaron just enough to look at him, smiling apologetically before she leans in to kiss his cheek. Her lips are warm and soft, and the brief moment they are pressed against him are not nearly enough. She gasps loudly enough for just him to hear, her breath skipping across his skin, and he turns his head to look at her, his nose briefly skimming across hers before she pulls away.
“There,” she says, swallowing thickly as she rubs her thumb over where she’d kissed him, buffing away lipstick she’d left in her wake, a temporary tattoo of everything they’d never spoken about rubbed from his skin. She clears her throat and looks over to Dave and Derek, sounding more sure than she looks as they stare at them both slightly wide eyed, as if something that just clicked into place for them both, “Is that good enough?”
Dave and Derek nod in unison, and the former smirks, his eyes shining with mischief as his eyes meet Aaron’s, “Definitely.”
Emily lets go of Aaron, stepping away just enough to smile at him, “We should go, the unsub won’t wait for us.”
He nods, clearing his throat, grateful when his voice doesn’t shake, “Let’s go.”
___
She thinks she should be in more pain.
She knows she’s loaded up on painkillers - the haziness in her head is enough to tell her that - but she still thinks it should hurt more . She almost wants it to, wants to feel the pain she’s sure she deserves to feel so she can distract herself from the fact her funeral had happened just a few hours ago.
She wondered what it meant that part of her wished she had died, that her friends, her family, really were burying her and not a coffin filled with sandbags to match her weight. If she was dead, it would all be over. The pain would be gone, and so would everything else. She wouldn’t be stuck in a bed, every movement a lance to her abdomen, and she wouldn’t be faced with what felt like insurmountable physical therapy. She wouldn’t be waiting on getting just well enough that she could be put on a plane to god knows where, another city in the world tainted by Ian Doyle and the life she’d had with him, the life she’d never entirely been able to outrun.
She knew the team wouldn’t stop looking for him, that they’d hunt him to the ends of the earth even though she was dead to most of them. Revenge and a thirst for justice the only things they thought they had left to give her.
There’s a knock on the door to her room, and she knows it’s Aaron before he opens it. Not only because he’s one of only a small handful of people who knows she’s alive, but because it was so like him to show up today of all days. He smiles at her as he walks in, and she wants to hate him for the sympathy chiselled into his features. If there was one person who she trusted to see her like this, barely able to move and attached to more machines than she thought possible, it would be him.
He knew what it was like to be torn apart and sewn back together and not know if you even wanted to be.
“Hi,” he says, his voice low and quiet in a way he only usually used on Jack.
“Hi,” she replies as he sits on the chair next to her bed. He looks smart, wearing the suit he’d worn to Haley’s funeral too, and it makes her ache, everything she’d never been brave enough to say bitter on her tongue.
“How are you feeling?” He asks, his sad smile the only acknowledgement that it was a silly question.
She hums, her lips turning up into a smile she hopes he doesn’t see through, “Would it be in bad taste if I said ‘like death?’”
He laughs, a sound she thinks she’d fallen in love with before she fell in love with him. It was at odds with the rest of him, loud and bold and almost goofy, and it was the first thing that showed her he was just as human as the rest of them.
“Yes,” he replies, reaching over and placing his hand over hers, gently linking their fingers together without thought, “It would be.”
She smiles, but it fades, and she tries to hold his hand but can’t find the strength, “How was it?”
She almost regrets asking the moment she does, the pain that knits his brows together somehow more painful to bear than Ian’s stake had been, but then he smiles softly at her, a look in his eyes that she won’t allow herself to name here.
“It was…fine,” he says, squeezing her hand again, his thumb running back and forth over the heel of it, “Garcia’s fascinator was outstanding.”
She laughs at that and then groans, pain licking through her from her abdomen outwards, cracking her ribs as it flows through her. She gasps, but even breathing hurts, and everything other than the pain fades away.
Then she hears his voice, gentle reassurances as he tells her it’s okay. She thinks he might call her sweetheart and kiss her knuckles, but she isn’t sure - the line between what was real and what her brain was doing to protect her thinner than ever. Eventually, it gets easier to breathe, and he looks wrung out when she looks at him, and she can’t stop the tears that gather in her eyes.
“I’m sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” he says, kissing her knuckles again, letting her know he had done it a few minutes ago, the sensation strangely familiar even if she didn’t really remember it, “Do you want me to go?”
She shakes her head fiercer than she thought she’d be capable of, “No,” she says, “Please stay. For a while. Unless you need to get home.”
She knew she’d be sent away soon, that these visits from him would stop the moment she was, and she wanted to store away as much of him as she could so she could remember how it felt to hold his hand when she was gone.
“Okay,” he assures her, “I’ll stay as long as you want me to.”
She doesn’t tell him that she wants him to stay forever, so she nods instead, “The nurse will kick you out eventually,” she says, casting a glance at the door to her room, “She’d give Nurse Ratched a run for her money.”
“Then I’ll stay until she makes me leave,” he assures her, squeezing her hand when she tries and fails to squeeze his, happy to be her strength despite there being so much left unsaid between the two of them, “We will get him, Em,” he says, “And we’ll get you home.”
She wants to believe him so much that it burns, makes tears push at the back of her eyes and she nods, even though she isn’t sure she agrees.
“Yeah,” she says, “We’ll get him.”
___
She’s worried when he doesn’t show up for work.
She knows she’s overthinking it, that the terror that had followed her everywhere in Paris, that had lingered in every shadow and followed her home was making her skittish. But it isn’t like him, and it reminds her a little too much of the last time he seemingly disappeared without a trace. She’s strangely proud of herself for making it to lunchtime before she goes to his place, one too many unanswered texts sparking against the already present anxiety in her gut, letting it catch fire and spread through her veins. If the rest of the team thinks anything of it, they don’t say anything, and she’s grateful for it as she walks out of the office uninterrupted.
Emily lets herself into his apartment - this time because she has a key, not because the door has been left open by a man who had tried to destroy him - and instead of finding a pool of blood on the floor she finds Aaron curled up on the couch, used tissues and half-open packets of flu medicine on the coffee table in front of him. The relief is brief, all too fleeting because he doesn’t flinch when she closes the door behind her. She almost trips over her own feet to make it to his side, hitting the floor with a crack in her knees that she hears but doesn’t feel as she touches his forehead, the temperature of his skin making her wince.
“Aaron,” she says, running her hand down his cheek and then to his neck, desperately trying to wake him up. He was always warm. Every time they’d hugged, or on the odd occasion they’d held hands or taken turns to stamp their lips against a cheek or a knuckle, she’d always enjoyed his warmth. It drew her in, like a moth to a flame, something deeply comforting about just being near him. This was different - he was hot, his t-shirt sticking to him with sweat, and she knew she needed to get his temperature down. She shakes his shoulder, the time to be delicate already behind her, and she curses herself for not coming here this morning, “Aaron.”
His head hurts as he wakes up, a grumble coming from somewhere deep inside his chest, and he opens his eyes, “Emily?”
“Yeah,” she says, pushing his hair from his forehead, “It’s me. You didn’t come to work. I was worried.”
“Sorry,” he mutters, blinking heavily, the room spinning around her, “I meant to call. Think I fell asleep.”
She chuckles and it shudders out of her, “I think you did too. Is Jack here?”
He shakes his head as he lets her guide him so he’s sitting up, most of his weight against her side as she sits next to him, “Jess took him this morning.”
“Good,” she says, pleased she only has one Hotchner to contend with when he was this sick, “That’s good. We need to get your temperature down.”
He shakes his head, “I’m okay.”
She places her hand on his cheek, “No, you’re not. I’ll get you some water so you can take some meds, and if they don’t work we’ll need to get you into a lukewarm shower.”
He chuckles, his eyes dazed as they meet hers, “I knew you’ve always been looking for a reason to get me out of my pants.”
She laughs despite herself and she shakes her head at him, knowing he wouldn’t come close to saying anything like that if he wasn’t delirious with fever, “Well, you should know better than to deny a lady what she wants,” she jokes, and she pats his cheek, “I’ll be back in a second, okay?”
She successfully convinces him to take the medication, and he quickly falls back asleep, his head in her lap as he traps her in place - as if she’d ever consider leaving him in this state. She texts Dave to let him know Aaron is sick and that she is looking after him, and she turns on the TV, keeping the volume low even though she’s sure a marching band could tear through Aaron’s living room and he wouldn’t even flinch.
She finds herself running her fingers through his hair and scratching his scalp, doing whatever she can to comfort him even in sleep. She doesn’t know how much time has passed when he twitches in her lap, his grip around her waist tightening.
“No.”
She furrows her brow at the way he gasps, and she does her best to look down at him, but he’s still asleep, his forehead shining with sweat as he frowns at something she cannot see, “Aaron-”
“You can’t hurt her.”
“Aaron,” she says firmly, and his eyes open, but she knows it isn’t just her that he’s seeing, that he’s still in the grip of a nightmare brought on by his fever.
“Emily, it isn’t safe,” he babbles, and she helps him sit up, her hands tight in the material of his t-shirt on his shoulders, “Need to make you safe.”
“Aaron,” she says, repeating his name in the hopes that it will calm him. She stands up and somehow lifts him with her, most of his weight against her side as she encourages him to move, “It’s okay, you have a fever. We’re safe.”
“Need to keep you safe.”
She doesn’t know what he’s seeing, if it’s Foyet, or Ian or both of them, and the only reason she doesn’t cry is because she knows it wouldn’t help anything right now. She gets him into the shower and turns it on, not thinking about her clothes or his as she gets him under the stream of lukewarm water. He’s holding her so tightly that as he slips down the wall she has no choice but to follow, holding his head against her chest, his eyes level with the brand mark hidden by her sodden shirt, and she kisses his forehead.
“You’re okay, honey,” she whispers against his wet skin, the stream from the shower making her hair stick to his and her skin at the same time. She doesn’t care, doesn’t care that her clothes are sticking to her in a way that would usually make her cringe, all she cares about is him and making sure he’s okay. She kisses his forehead again and closes her eyes, finally letting the tears slip free, mixing in with the water falling around them, “I’m right here.”
“Need you to be safe,” he says, his chin chattering even though he’s still burning up, “Can’t lose you too.”
She screws her eyes shut and buries her face in his hair, guilt making her shiver in a way the cold water lashing down on her hadn’t, “You won’t lose me, Aaron,” she promises him, “I’m right here.”
Eventually, his fever passes, and when he’s lucid again he asks her why they are in his shower in their clothes. He gives her sweats and a sweater of his to change into, and neither one of them talks about it when they wake up hours later curled up in his bed.
___
He’s so nervous, it feels ridiculous.
He didn’t remember being this nervous when he asked Haley out back in high school, although she always used to claim she asked him out. It had been a playful joke between them, both of them rewriting that early part of their relationship when they were both young and unburdened by everything life had in store for them.
This felt different. He loved Haley, of course, he had, and he still did and always would, but this was Emily. She was his best friend, his confidant, and he didn’t have to imagine what it would feel like to lose her. Standing over her grave, even though he knew it was empty, had been just as hard as standing over Haley’s. The same feeling of guilt and shame that he hadn’t been able to save her wrapped around his throat as he struggled to breathe. It was a feeling that had made him go to Pakistan, to leave the city haunted by the two women he loved, memories with either one of them painted into every corner.
He’d watched Emily struggle since she came back, seen how she’d desperately tried to fit into a life she wasn’t sure she belonged in anymore, a square piece for a round hole, and at first he’d tried to stand back, to let her help herself, but it proved useless. He’d tried to approach it as her boss initially, something that had felt wrong even as he’d done it, desperate to appeal to the part of her that knew she was going about her recovery all wrong. She promised to come to him on her bad days, and she did, and it felt like a step back towards where they’d once been.
Then, she’d come to his place and found him delirious with the flu, and they’d take big leaping bounds back to where they’d been before Ian Doyle had torn through their lives. It was suddenly as if no time had passed, as if they were back on the precipice of something and she was letting him in. Would let him see the parts of her he thought he’d buried in her otherwise empty casket, slotted amongst sandbags he’d loaded into it himself, and for the first time in a long time, he felt like they might finally get what they both deserved.
He works up the nerve to ask her on a date, a real one with just the two of them at a nice restaurant and a bunch of flowers he’d already started thinking about, and the last thing he needs to do is just ask. Dave keeps telling him to not put it off any longer, that the only two people who didn’t seem to know they were heads over heels for each other were the two of them, but he takes everything his friend says with a pinch of salt. He knew Dave had the next couple of weeks in the office pool for when Aaron and Emily would officially go on a date because Spencer had accidentally copied him in on the email.
He hears Jack’s bedroom door open and then close followed by Emily’s footsteps down the hall, her smile wide as she appears in the living room, “He scammed a second story out of me before he fell asleep,” she says, sitting back down on the couch next to him with a thud, reaching out for her glass of wine, “That son of yours could talk me into anything.”
He chuckles, “Thanks for doing bedtime, you didn’t have to do that.”
She shrugs as if it was nothing, as if the love she had for his son wasn’t everything, and sips her wine, “I wanted to,” she says, reaching for the remote, “Now he’s in bed, how about we watch a movie that isn’t animated.”
He watches her flick through the channels, her feet tucked under her on his couch, drinking a wine he’d bought with her in mind, and she looks so deliciously domestic, so at home in his home, that it leaves him dumbstruck. He’s seen her in all kinds of situations, in sharp suits and beautiful dresses, but he thinks this - in a pair of leggings and a sweater she never gave back to him after she forced him into a shower to lower his fever - is the most beautiful she’s ever been.
“Aaron?” She says, her smile curious, and he shakes his head, physically clearing himself of everything he’d been thinking of, his smile tight as she raises an eyebrow at him, “Are you-”
“Will you go to dinner with me?” He asks, the invite slipping free from his tongue before he can stop it, all the planning he’d done for this moment gone in an instant, swept away by the flutter of her eyelashes as she blinks wordlessly at him.
“Dinner?” She chokes out, the remote abandoned between them now, and he can’t read her expression, all of his training and experience worth nothing in what felt like one of the most important moments of his life.
“Yes, dinner,” he replies, swallowing thickly, “Like a date.”
She presses her lips together, and he thinks it's to stop herself from laughing at him, “‘Like a date?’ or an actual date.”
“An actual date,” he says, his throat dry, because of course, she wouldn’t make it easy on him. But then she’s smiling, the room brighter because of it, and she shifts closer to him, her knee knocking against his thigh.
“I thought you’d never ask.”
The relief is overwhelming, his chest collapsing in on itself with the weight of it, “Is that as yes?”
She nods, her eyes shining up at him, “Yes. Of course, it’s a yes.”
For a moment, he thinks he’s going to kiss her, to finally bridge that gap, but he doesn’t. He stamps his lips against her cheek instead and hovers there for a moment, breathing her in before he pulls back, “It’s a date.”
She does laugh at him this time, her fingers pressed against the spot where he’d kissed her, her other hand tight around her wine glass to stop herself from pushing forward and kissing him, happy to let him take the lead.
“It’s a date.”
___
She worried that the date would be awkward, that after everything they wouldn’t know how to be around each other as they transitioned from friends to more.
She knew the second he showed up at her place, a bunch of cat-friendly flowers in hand, that she didn’t need to have worried. He wears a suit she’s seen him in countless times before with a tie she bought him several Christmases ago, and she wears a dress she bought especially for the evening. They don’t have to get to know each other over dinner, they already know each other as well as two people could. It’s just like any other dinner they’d shared, but they hold hands over the table and she doesn’t argue with him over the bill because she knows how important this is to him.
When he walks her to her apartment, she makes a point of moving slowly, not wanting the night to end but unsure for the first time all evening what his next move would be. She smiles at him as she turns to look at him whilst she fishes her keys out of her purse, their faces close enough that she can feel his breath skip across her skin.
“Do you want to come in?” She asks, and he squeezes her hip as he nods, fire burning all the way up into her chest because of the reverence of his touch, “We can have a nightcap.”
He nods again and she unlocks the door, chuckling when Sergio immediately circles her legs, meowing in disdain when he sees she has company.
“Sorry, Serg,” she says, leaning down to pick him up. She cradles him like he’s a baby and scratches between his ears, smiling up at Aaron as she says the next part, “But we talked about this, you're not the only guy in my life anymore.”
Sergio meows again and scrambles out of her arms, hitting the floor with a graceful thud before he runs off into the apartment, clearly not wanting any part of the rest of their evening.
“Are you sure he won’t mind sharing?” Aaron jokes, wrapping his arm around her waist as they walk towards her kitchen, and she chuckles.
“He’ll get used to it,” she says, pressing her lips together as her eyes flick to his. She’d kissed him so many times, and he’d kissed her, but never properly. She worried she’d built it up too much now, that it could never live up to what she’d imagined since that first time he kissed the tip of her nose on a cold Saturday morning. She meets his eyes and clears her throat, “Wine or scotch?”
“Dealers choice,” he replies, and she chuckles, slipping past him, her hands against her chest as she goes.
“I’ve got a nice bottle that Dave bought me a while ago,” she says, smirking as their eyes meet, “He said to keep it for a special occasion.”
Aaron hums and leans against her kitchen counter, “I have the same one from him. Do you think his cellar is full of it, or that he has stock in that particular brand?”
She chuckles as she pours them both a glass, “I think it might be both,” she quips, walking over to him and handing him his drink, “Here you go.”
The air crackles with the tension between them, and he smiles as he clinks his glass against hers, “Cheers.”
She nods and clears her throat, “Cheers.”
It’s a flash of bravery he doesn’t fully understand that makes him lean forward the moment she swallows a sip of the scotch. He presses his lips against hers, tasting the malty liquor against her skin, and it’s immediately spoiled for him - because expensive bottle or not, he knows it could never possibly taste as good as it does on her. She hums into the kiss, blindly putting her drink down on the counter as she wraps her arms around him and pulls him closer, her fingers trailing through his hair as he abandons his drink too, his hands on her back as he anchors her to him. It’s everything she always knew it would be and more, like he’s scattering her into a million pieces and pulling her back together all at once, and she wonders if this is what a simple kiss is like what else they have to come.
She doesn’t want it to end, doesn’t want what she knows will be her last first kiss to stop, but the need to breathe overwhelms everything else, and she pulls back, her forehead against his as she sucks in a breath, her tongue chasing the taste of him on her lips.
“That was…” she says, the first to speak out of the two of them but unable to finish a sentence. She huffs out a laugh across his cheek, “We should have done that a long time ago.”
He laughs and nods, his forehead knocking against hers before he pulls back to look at her, tucking her hair behind her ear as he smiles at her, “Maybe. But at least we’ve done it now,” he says, leaning forward to stamp his lips against hers, a quick thing, another first, and he pulls back, “And we have forever to catch up.”
She kisses him, unable to stop herself now she’d started, a new addiction she knew she’d never get enough of. There would be plenty of kisses to come - happy, angry, hopeful, sad, comforting and everything in between - but every one of them full of the love neither of them had confessed to yet, but that both of them knew lingered in the air around them and the way they were touching each other.
“Well,” she says, tugging gently on a tie she’d once agonised over for hours before she kisses his lower lip, smiling up at him as she pulls back just enough to speak, “We’d better get started.”