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Emily sighs contentedly as she steps out of her bedroom, rolling her neck against the ache that always seemed to come after sleeping on thin hotel mattresses and pillows that weren’t hers. The team had just landed back in DC a couple of hours ago after three days away on a case, and the first thing she’d done was jump in the shower the second she got home - standing under water that bordered on too hot as she washed away the horrors they’d seen the last few days.
She smiles as she walks past her couch, pausing to pet Sergio as he stands on the back of it, delighted to see her after putting up with the neighbour who called in to check on him whilst she was away.
“What should I get for dinner, buddy? Chinese food or pizza?” She says, grimacing as she thinks of eating takeout again, but aware of the fact she had no energy to go grocery shopping. Her phone chimes with a text, and she pulls it out of the pocket of her FBI hooded sweatshirt, Aaron’s sweatshirt, and she smiles when she sees a text from the man in question.
Fancy coming over? Jack keeps asking why you aren’t here. We both miss you.
It had been a month since their first date, since she’d finally kissed him and then tugged him into her apartment by his tie, and she knew she’d never been happier. No one on the team knew about them yet, and they were figuring out a way they could tell them about the shift in their relationship, so when the jet landed there wasn’t a chance to discuss anything beyond ‘ see you at work on Monday’ like they were simply colleagues, not a couple who were still very much in the phase of their relationship where they couldn’t get enough of each other. He was the first person she’d been with since the damage Ian had left behind, and she knew she was the first person Aaron had been with since Foyet. It made it oddly comforting, made her feel less self-conscious, knowing he was in a similar situation too. Like they were starting all over again, just the two of them, as if anything or anyone that had come before them happened to somebody else.
Even this early on, she knew that wasn’t something that would really go away. It would change, it would grow and mature along with them, would shift from taking the time to memorise every bit of each other and creating mental roadmaps of each other's hills and valleys, to something more settled. Something built on the strong foundation of knowing another person as well as possible. No less comforted or in need of the other’s presence, but more used to, more reliant on it.
She calls him instead of replying via text, and she sits on the couch. Sergio immediately climbs into her lap, headbutting her hand for the attention he’d missed from her. She scratches his head and smiles as he curls up against her, purring so loudly he practically vibrates with it.
Aaron answers the phone on the second ring, and she doesn’t have to be looking at him to know he’s smiling, “Hi sweetheart.”
“Hi,” she replies, letting her eyes drift closed at the comforting sound of his voice, “I miss you too,” she says before she can stop herself, her cheeks warm with embarrassment she doesn’t fully understand, “I don’t want to intrude, though.”
“You’re never intruding,” he replies, “And I wouldn’t have invited you over if you were. Jack wants you to come over too.”
“ Yeah, Emily, come over.”
She sinks her teeth in her lower lip in an attempt to contain her smile at the sound of Jack in the background, as if her happiness was something she wanted to hide even from herself. She’d made it clear to Aaron from the start that she didn’t want to overstep, that she never wanted to get in the way of his time with Jack, but for every part of her that wanted to spend all of her time with Aaron, there was an equal part that wanted to do the same with Jack. She’d fallen in love with the little boy long before she’d fallen in love with his father, drawn in by his dimpled smile and his bright eyes from the moment she’d first met him when he was a tiny thing balanced on his mother’s hip.
“It’s a tempting offer,” she says, but her heart pangs when she looks at Sergio, guilt for leaving him alone again after only just getting home burning her from the inside out.
“You can bring Sergio over too,” he says, anticipating her needs as always, “Even if he does hate me.”
Emily rolls her eyes, “He doesn’t hate you,” she says, unable to stop her smile from getting any wider as he chuckles down the line, “Are you sure?”
“I didn’t buy all those things for him just for fun, Em. It’s because we love having you both here.”
She laughs, “Well, I guess we’re coming over then.” It warms her from the inside out when she hears Aaron tell Jack that she’d agreed to come over and she hears the little boy celebrate, “I’ll grab dinner on the way over. Pizza? Do you guys want the usual?”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I want to,” she replies, “If you’re providing bed and breakfast for Sergio and me, the least we can do is provide dinner.”
“Okay,” he says, knowing better than to argue any further, “We’ll see you soon?”
“I just need to pack a bag for me and get Sergio sorted, and then I’ll be on my way over,” she says, and she can hear his smile again, and she finds herself almost desperate to see it.
“See you soon, sweetheart.”
She has to press her lips together to stop three little words from escaping, purposely keeping them in her chest where they belonged for now, “See you soon, honey.”
___
The moment she arrives, she’s almost knocked over by Jack. He runs at her, his arms tight around her waist as he hugs her and talks at a million miles an hour about everything he’d done at school since he last saw her. She’s got her bag over her shoulder, Sergio’s carrier in one hand and two pizza boxes in the other.
“Buddy,” Aaron says, his smile wide as he watches from a few feet away, looking relaxed and happy and hers as he stands there in a t-shirt and sweatpants that match the sweater she’s wearing, “At least let Emily into the apartment.” He says, taking the pizza boxes from her whilst he winks at her, “We need to help her with all her things."
Jack nods, his expression serious as he steps back from her, “Right, sorry, Emily.”
“It’s okay, sweetie,” she says, running her fingers through his hair. “Want to take Sergio?” She offers, handing over the carrier, smiling when she hears a discontent meow from inside, “You remember how to open it up, right?”
Jack smiles and nods enthusiastically, taking the carrier to the couch to set it down so he can let the cat out. “Hi, Sergio.” As soon as he unzips the carrier, Sergio bolts across the apartment, and Jack frowns, his expression nothing short of adorable.
“Don’t worry, Jack,” Emily assures him, her bag and shoes now on the floor so she can tug him into a hug “As soon as he remembers it’s safe here, he’ll come out and say hi.”
“Jack, will you go get some plates, please?” Aaron says, placing the pizza boxes down on the coffee table, and the little boy runs off, giving Emily and Aaron their first moment alone all day. Aaron wraps his arm around her waist the moment the pizza is no longer in his hands, and he tugs her closer, smiling as she wraps her arms around his neck. “Hi.”
She hums contentedly and leans in to kiss him. “Hi,” she replies, kissing him again, “I miss you.”
His hand slips under the hem of the sweatshirt she’d stolen from him and the t-shirt underneath, his palm warm and wide against her bare skin, “We spent most of the day together.”
She scrunches her nose up and kisses him again, “It’s not the same, though. I can’t just kiss you in front of everyone.”
He pulls her in for a hug, and because she’s barefoot apart from a pair of socks, also stolen from him, she can tuck herself right against him, his chin on top of her head as he continues to run circles on her back.
“We’ll tell them at Dave’s next week,” he assures her. “Then we don’t have to keep it a secret anymore.”
She pouts in a way she wouldn’t if she wasn’t exhausted and ruined by him in a way no one else had ever been able to come close to, “I still won’t be able to kiss you at work, though.”
“True,” he laughs, the sound punctuated by a kiss against her lips as Jack runs back into the room, “One step at a time, sweetheart.”
Jack hands her a plate, and they sit on the couch. Emily is boxed in by both Hotchners, and she tilts her head curiously as she notices open photo albums stacked on the corner of the coffee table, “What’s all this?”
“We were looking at pictures of Mommy and Daddy when they first met,” Jack says, smiling appreciatively at Aaron as he places a slice of pizza on his plate, “Did you know they met in high school?”
She nods as she holds out her plate to Aaron, smiling when he puts some pizza on there for her, “I did know that.”
Jack takes a bite of his pizza, but doesn’t let a mouthful of bread and cheese stop him from talking, “Mommy was so pretty. And Daddy was…well, Daddy.”
“Thanks, Jack,” Aaron quips, and Emily hums sympathetically, placing her hand on his knee as she squeezes the joint.
“I’m sure your dad was very handsome, just like he is now,” she says, winking when Aaron’s eyes meet hers.
“When we’ve eaten, you should look at the pictures too, Emily. Daddy says we can’t look whilst we are eating because we’ll get the pictures dirty.”
She doesn’t mean to freeze, but she does, her body briefly tense before she can stop it because this was something she didn’t know how to handle. She wanted to be part of it, to sit here squished between the two of them as Jack learnt more about the woman he’d had stolen from him when he was so young, but she didn’t want to intrude, to insert herself into memories that she was not meant to be a part of. Aaron notices, because of course he does, and he places his hand over hers on his knee, linking their fingers together briefly, his eyes soft when she looks up at him again.
“That will be nice, Jack,” he says, assuring her with nothing more than a flicker of a smile that he was okay with it, “But we should eat first and then-”
“Wash our hands,” Jack says, rolling his eyes, “I know.”
Aaron leans in to whisper to her, “That’s all you, you know. He never used to do that.”
She smiles, any anxiety she’d briefly felt forgotten, and she shrugs playfully. “What can I say? I’m an excellent influence.”
___
They spend some time flipping through the albums after they’ve eaten, Emily leaning against Aaron and Jack against her with Sergio on his lap as she lets the little boy point out who is who to her. Aaron needs to correct him a couple of times, his voice soft and loving as he reminds him of what he’d told him the last time they’d flicked through these photos - pictures of the little boy’s mom and dad as kids themselves, moments frozen in time and kept safe behind plastic, both of them young and unaware of everything that was to come.
Eventually, it’s time for Jack to go to bed, and he hugs and kisses her cheek and tells her he loves her before Aaron shepherds him down the hallway, followed by Sergio, who would inevitably end up sleeping on the end of Jack’s bed. She finds herself alone on the couch, still flicking through the photo album, finding herself unable to stop looking at pictures of the man she loved when he was a lanky teenager - all limbs and height he hadn’t quite grown into yet. She flicks onto the next page of pictures, and something catches her eye immediately.
Aaron and Haley are standing in the middle of a group of friends, people she’s sure they hugged at graduation and promised they’d stay in touch with before their friendship faded - worn away with time and distance - and they are both smiling widely, but that’s not what she’s looking at. She holds the album closer, a gasp escaping her as it finally clicks what she’s looking at, and she chuckles to herself.
“No fucking way.”
Aaron, her stern, very serious, all sharp edges and pressed suits, boyfriend used to have an earring.
“He’s curled up with Sergio and a book,” Aaron says as he walks back into the living room, “Do you want a glass of…” he trails off when he sees the look on her face, the mix of delight and shock as she looks up at him and lets out a surprised laugh, “What’s wrong?”
She turns the album to face him, and his eyes go wide because he’d forgotten those photos were in the album he’d left her with, “You had your ear pierced?”
He sighs, “Em-”
“Come here,” she says, reaching for his hand and tugging him down to the couch, placing the photo album carefully on the coffee table before she climbs onto his lap and grabs his right ear, “I can’t believe I never noticed…” she gasps in delight when she spots it, a tiny scar in the lobe of his ear that she immediately presses her thumb against, “You really did have your ear pierced,” she smiles as she pulls back, pressing her lips together when she sees the pink tinge to his cheeks, feels the way he squeezes her hips, “Sorry, honey,” she says, clearing her throat, “I just never…expected you to have your ear pierced.”
He smiles, completely unable to stop himself in the face of her excitement at learning something new, something so unexpected, about him, “You’re not going to let it go until I tell you about it, are you?”
She shakes her head, her smile so wide it makes him ache before she leans in to kiss him, fully settling into his lap, her arms around his neck and her thumb and finger still pressed to both sides of the tiny scar on his ear.
“Tell me everything.”
“Haley dared me to do it,” he says, wrapping his arms around Emily to secure her to him, her side pressed against his chest as his hand once again sneaks under the sweater she’s wearing, “And I was a teenage boy in love for the first time and entirely unable say no to her,” he says, smiling as he thinks about it, “So we went and got it pierced in a studio that makes me shudder when I think about it now, and I let her pick out the earring. I had it for a few weeks. I took it out for high school graduation and forgot to put it back in, so it healed over. I tried to force it back through, but it wasn’t happening.” His eyes meet hers, and any embarrassment he’d felt is long gone, replaced with warm nostalgia and the joy of sharing this part of himself with the woman he loves. “Haley was disappointed, I was not,” he chuckles, and Emily does too, her hand finally slipping from his ear to his neck as she makes him look at her again, “She said it made me look cool. As you saw, it did not.”
“I don’t know,” she says playfully, running her thumb back and forth over his jaw. “I think it looked pretty cool, too,” she says, leaning in to kiss him quickly, “Between your single diamond earring, and my Siouxsie and the Banshees phase, we would have made quite the pair in high school.”
He chuckles at that and turns to kiss her palm, “I dread to think what you could have talked me into,” he says wryly, “I probably would have got my lip pierced or something to impress you.”
Emily laughs and shakes her head at him before she kisses him again and then snuggles into his chest, her forehead tucked into his neck, “I like learning new things about you.”
He drops a kiss to her hairline, words he didn’t know how to say quite yet pressed against her skin, “I like learning new things about you, too.”