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#1
“What’s that?” Aaron asks, pausing beside the conference table.
“One of the detective’s wives made us cookies,” JJ says, holding out the tray.
Emily lights up. “Wow. Homemade cookies?”
She sounds almost giddy. Not sarcastic or performative. Just… genuinely delighted, like someone who didn’t often get to indulge in that kind of comfort.
Aaron glances at her, surprised. She’s still new to the team and navigating the rhythms and rituals of the BAU. He hasn’t quite figured her out yet: this sharp, self-possessed agent with perfect posture and dry humour. On paper, she’s intimidating: fluent in half a dozen languages with an Ivy League education and diplomatic lineage. All polish and precision.
But that smile is soft edges and wide eyes, and it makes something in his chest warm unexpectedly. He watches as she carefully selects a cookie, inspecting it with quiet reverence before taking a hearty bite.
Later, when everyone is packing up and heading back to Quantico, he slips one of the remaining cookies into a napkin and tucks it into her go-bag.
He doesn’t know why. Only that she’d looked so happy holding one. And that he wants her to have another.
#2
He’s not sure when it started, but now it’s a ritual. Every few weeks, when they’re grounded in Quantico, he does a morning coffee run.
He’s long memorised the team’s orders - black for himself and Morgan, latte for JJ, something herbal for Reid, and a cappuccino for Emily (of course, Dave insists only on his own fancy espresso machine). But lately, without really thinking about it, he’s been adding something extra to her cup: a biscotti, a miniature muffin dotted with blueberries, or perhaps a sugar-coated waffle cookie that reminds him of Amsterdam even though he’s never been.
At first, it was a whim; a small gesture. But he notices how her eyes light up when she lays eyes on that day’s treat. How her posture eases and the corners of her mouth quirk upward in a way that’s rare on briefing days. So he keeps doing it.
Each time, he leaves them waiting for her on her desk, always just before she arrives. Sometimes she teases him about it (“You know I’m going to eat this before 10am, right?”), but mostly she just thanks him with a look that says more than words. And once in a while, she gives him that same smile: the one she wore the first time she bit into a homemade cookie all those years ago in Houston. It had caught him off guard then, all soft joy and unguarded light, a moment of delight that didn’t quite match the woman on her resume.
But now? Now he knows that smile. He looks for it.
One day, she takes the chocolate muffin, splits it in half, and sets the other piece beside his coffee. They don’t talk about it. But he eats it anyway.
#3
She stands outside the church long after everyone else has gone.
In her hand is a worn photograph. Three teenagers - Matthew, John, and herself - smiling in the Roman sun. For a second, she’s taken back to how careless and young they were, before everything splintered and she was left to pick up the pieces.
The dark red of her blood seeps slowly down her lip, stark against the pristine white snow - a crimson stain on the silent, frozen world, as if her demons are bleeding out, exorcised but far from gone. She wipes it away with the back of her hand, staring at the church’s facade like it might offer answers if she just looks long enough.
It doesn’t.
By the time she gets home, the photograph is back in her coat pocket and her face is scrubbed clean, but everything inside her feels raw and frayed. She doesn’t turn the lights on. Instead, she stands in her kitchen with hands braced on the counter, willing the ache to settle somewhere she can ignore.
She thinks about John’s voice. About Matthew’s kindness. About the baby she never got to know. And then she goes to bed, fully clothed, without eating anything at all.
On the other side of the city, Aaron lies awake in the dark, the weight of her silence pressing against his thoughts. He replays the hollow look in her eyes; the quiet rage after he told her she’d been suspended, the way she’d averted his gaze as she stepped into the elevator. He didn’t say anything to Dave, but he was grateful that Emily had someone trustworthy to lean on.
Aaron hadn’t come down hard on her - not really - and a part of him knew why. Mostly, he did what protocol dictated. His hands were tied, and as disappointed as Emily seemed, he knew intuitively that she would understand the impossible position he was in. But it still felt like a betrayal.
Still, he’d called the State Department for her. He’d called The Vatican, for God’s sake - a place that he’d never imagined his job would take him. He’d pushed harder than he should have, because it was her, and because she’d looked like she needed someone to carry the weight for a while. He’ll learn the whole story only years later, but he knows enough to understand what pain looks like in someone who’s used to hiding it. And he knows the look of someone who’s trying not to fall apart.
So the next morning, on his way to the office, he makes a detour. He lines up for a pain au chocolat from a bakery near Dupont Circle that Garcia had mentioned once - the one with the flaky and buttery layers Emily likes. When he arrives at her apartment building, he doesn’t knock or text. He just leaves it in a brown paper bag, looped carefully around the handle of her front door, his initials scrawled near the base.
It’s a silent offering. No questions or expectations.
When she finds the croissant later, she doesn’t smile - not right away - but a fraction of her grief from the night before disappears into the cold air. And in the quiet of her apartment, surrounded by silence and ghosts, she sits on the floor and eats it slowly. It’s the first good thing she’s tasted in days: warm, soft, and gentle.
She never mentions it directly. But when she passes Aaron in the hallway that afternoon, she holds his gaze for just a second longer than usual.
And he knows she knows.
#4
The hospital room smells like antiseptic and fear. She looks too pale beneath the sheets, her body still and fragile in a way he’s never seen before - not even after the worst cases. Her pulse ticks on the monitor, stubborn and steady, but she’s a shell of her former self.
And now he has to let her go.
They’ve - he’s - made the decision. Witness protection. A new identity. The funeral arrangements are already in motion. Official story: Emily Prentiss died on the operating table. Truth: she’s disappearing for her own safety, and he’s helping bury the evidence.
He doesn’t speak much while she sleeps. He just sits by her bed, thumb brushing over her knuckles, slow and steady, and it isn’t lost on him that she’d done the same thing for him when Foyet had attacked him. Like if he stays quiet enough, maybe the weight of his presence will follow her wherever she’s going.
When the nurse steps out and they’re finally alone, he moves to her bag, which is packed neatly and waiting by the wall. He adds nothing but a napkin-wrapped cookie, still sealed from that morning’s café run. It’s one of her favorites: cinnamon and sugar, soft in the center. He doesn’t need to leave a note for her to know where it came from.
It’s all he can give her. Not comfort. Not protection.
Just… something sweet for the road.
#5
Months later, she returns to the BAU like a ghost with a badge and perfectly filed paperwork.
There are handshakes and hugs, and brief moments of stunned silence when people think she’s not looking. Garcia cries openly, and JJ immediately pulls her into a long hug. Emily moves through it all quietly, like a figure in a dream. Everything’s the same, but she isn’t. Her desk is still hers. Her coffee mug is still in the cabinet. But the weight of being alive in a place that mourned her - that buried her - is not something she knows how to carry yet.
And not everyone welcomes her back with open arms. Spencer looks at her like she’s vanished again every time she enters the room. He’s not truly angry, she knows, but he’s just hurt. Devastated, even. She can see it in the way he fidgets more than usual; the way he can’t quite hold eye contact when she speaks, like he’s trying to do the math on a grief that no longer makes sense.
The worst part isn’t actually the grief, she realises after a few days. It’s the awkward kindness, too-bright smiles, and cautious glances. Everyone’s walking on eggshells around her, even the nameless colleagues from other departments who pass her in the hallways.
Except Aaron.
With him, there’s no need to pretend. He doesn’t accost her with an overly cheerful “welcome back” or cast sidelong glances that make her seem like she’s going to shatter any minute. All he offers is steadiness and familiarity. The same way he used to pass her files across the conference table without looking up, or the way he still stands just behind her shoulder during briefings, solid and quiet and near. She’s nervous and hesitant around everyone else - careful not to speak too much or too soon. But somehow, not with him.
One evening, after a long debrief that stretches well past nine, she lingers in the office just long enough to drop off her final report. The door creaks as she opens it, but he doesn’t look up from his laptop, deep in concentration, even when she slides her report across the desk.
When she turns to leave, she pauses at the doorway, fingers tightening slightly around the doorknob. “That cookie,” she says softly, not turning around. “For the flight. I know it was you.”
He doesn’t respond right away; he just lowers his eyes. But when she finally looks back, he’s smiling.
“Did you eat it?” he asks.
She nods. “Didn’t even wait for takeoff.”
He chuckles quietly. So does she. It’s the first time she’s laughed since she came back.
For the first time since Paris, something inside her eases. And though he doesn’t say it, for the first time since she left, Aaron feels like he can breathe again.
#6
She doesn’t make a fuss about her birthday. She never has; not since she was a teenager, really. She’s mentioned it once, in passing (“I hate October. Too many expectations.”), and promptly moved on.
So when she walks into the BAU that morning and finds a single slice of chocolate fudge cake waiting on her desk, wrapped neatly in a bakery box with her name scribbled on the top, she stops short.
No one else seems to notice. But when she glances toward his office, she finds him already looking at her.
He lifts his coffee in a quiet little salute.
She smiles - small, secret, and entirely for him - and sits down to eat. For the first time in years, her birthday feels like less of a chore. Instead, it feels like a moment that she wants to keep.
#7
The leaves are falling when the question slips out, just weeks after her birthday. No fanfare. No dramatic gesture.
The team has just wrapped up a late case, and she’s silent in the passenger seat of Aaron’s SUV, hair damp from the rain and forehead pressed to the window. He glances over at a red light and asks, quietly but clearly, “Can I take you to dinner sometime?”
She turns to him slowly, surprised. Not because he asked, but because he finally said it out loud.
She smiles. “You mean like… a date?”
His eyes light up, and she memorises that look - Aaron Hotchner, almost impossibly tender. “That’s the idea.”
The next day, he asks her if she’d like to pick the restaurant, but she refuses. “You’ve been leaving me desserts for years,” she remarks, raising a brow. “It’s only fair that you pick one you’d be proud of.”
He books a quiet French restaurant in Georgetown that’s known for its decadent chocolate soufflé and impeccable wine list, because he knows they’re really there for the dessert. She shows up in an emerald green dress that makes her skin luminescent and he isn’t sure he’s ever laid eyes on something more beautiful. When she sits across from him, candlelight catching in her eyes, it feels like something inevitable has finally begun.
They talk like they always do, only now there’s a different current running beneath it. Her skin fizzes when his hand rests on top of hers on the table. And when the waiter asks if they want to see the dessert menus, she just laughs and nudges his ankle under the table.
“Don’t bother,” she says. “He already knows.”
He orders two soufflés anyway. But she steals bites of his just to make him smile.
Later, when he kisses her for the first time, slow and a little breathless, he tastes chocolate on her lips. And she tastes something even sweeter in the way he touches her, like maybe he’s been waiting for this longer than he’ll ever admit.
#8
They don’t talk much on the drive back from the office.
The case ended cleanly and the paperwork’s been filed, but the mood in the SUV is thick with everything they didn’t say back at Quantico. It started with a disagreement in the field - a tactical call he made without checking in with her, and ended with her sharp “You didn’t even ask me” that echoed too loudly, even hours later.
Now, the silence between them feels colder than the air-conditioning. She stares out the window, expressionless. He keeps both hands on the wheel and resists the urge to glance over at her. The low hum of traffic fills the void between them, but it doesn’t soften anything.
When he pulls up in front of her place, she unbuckles her seatbelt, grabs her go-bag, and says flatly, “Thanks for the ride.”
He waits for her to turn back; for the usual lean across the console and the brush of her lips against his jaw, warm and familiar and grounding. But she just gets out. No kiss. No goodnight. Just the door clicking shut and the sound of her footsteps fading into the hall.
He doesn’t sleep much that night. He keeps replaying the conversation and the edge in her voice - the part where he chose protocol over partnership. And the part where she looked at him like she didn’t recognise him.
At 7:00 the next morning, he’s in his kitchen, mixing bowl and measuring cups out and coffee already brewing. He’s not great at apologies, but he knows what speaks her language. By 8:00, he’s standing at her front door with a brown paper bag in one hand and a quiet hope in the other.
She opens the door in pajamas, hair a mess, clearly not expecting him. He holds up the bag like a peace flag. “Banana walnut. I made them with extra cinnamon.”
She crosses her arms and it’s clear that she’s trying not to smile. “Are you trying to bribe your way out of trouble?”
“Yes,” he says plainly, and she’s almost surprised by his candour. “And I brought coffee.”
She stares at him for a moment longer, then sighs, deep and heavy, but not sharp. Just… tired. “I hated yesterday,” she admits. “It felt like being shut out. Like you didn’t trust me.”
“I do trust you,” he says, stepping inside. “I just didn’t act like it.”
She doesn’t reply right away, but her gaze drops to the bag in his hand.
A lump forms in his throat. “I’m sorry. For how I handled it. For hurting you.”
She takes the bag from him, opens it, and pulls out a still-warm muffin. “You’re lucky you bake like a man who knows he’s wrong.”
“I’m very aware.”
She tears a piece off the muffin, eyes narrowing. “These better have extra butter.”
He feels some tension leave his shoulders. “They do.”
“Apology accepted. Barely.” She takes a bite, slow and dramatic, relishing not only the extra butter, but the look on his face as she chews.
He smiles. “I made six.”
She smirks. “Apology enthusiastically accepted.”
#9
It’s a rainy Sunday morning - the kind where the sky stays grey all day, the air smells like wet pavement, and the world feels like it’s folded itself into a quiet, secret pocket. Jack’s at Jessica’s place for the weekend, and for once, there’s no paperwork and no fires to put out.
There’s just a comfortable silence. Just them.
They’d spent most of the morning tangled in sheets; the kind of lazy, luxurious sex that makes time irrelevant. Now Emily is standing in the kitchen barefoot, wrapped in her nightgown that dips dangerously low, all silk and suggestion. Her hair is still mussed and her cheeks flushed, but she doesn't look the least bit sorry about any of it.
“I want something sweet,” she declares as she pokes around his pantry.
Aaron leans against the counter, watching her intently. “We just had sex.”
She glances over her shoulder. “Exactly.”
“Sweet and greedy. Dangerous combination.”
“Flatter me later. Do you have brown sugar?”
He checks the shelf behind her and leans in close. “Right here,” he murmurs, brushing her hip as he reaches past her.
She eyes him. “Don’t distract me with domestic foreplay.”
“No promises.”
They settle on cookies, but not the usual ones. Her version is crispy at the edges, soft in the center and speckled with dark chocolate chunks, with just a hint of espresso and sea salt. She calls them “grown-up cookies.” He calls them “dangerously effective.”
He stirs; she measures the ingredients. She tastes the dough off the spoon and hums. “Almost there.”
“Not enough salt?”
“Not enough you,” she says, streaking butter onto his cheek, to which he smirks.
A few minutes later, while he’s carefully folding in the chocolate chunks, she moves in behind him. Without saying a word, she wraps her arms around his waist and rests her cheek between his shoulder blades. He pauses and instinctively seeks her skin against his.
She presses a kiss to the back of his neck, slow and tender. “You’re very focused,” she murmurs.
“Trying not to overmix,” he says, amused.
Her arms tighten slightly around him. “You’re cute when you concentrate.”
“You say that like there’s a time I’m not cute.”
A part of her still doesn’t believe that she has access to this side of Aaron Hotchner - cheeky, carefree, cheerful. She nuzzles closer and drags her mouth along his jaw. “Debatable.”
He turns his head just enough to glance at her out of the corner of his eye. “You’re distracting.”
“That’s the goal.”
He retaliates with a swipe of flour to her nose. She kisses him - quick and hot and familiar - and then pulls away with an irreverent grin.
“Hmm. I can taste myself.”
He chuckles, low and warm. “The cookies aren’t as sweet as you.”
A beat. His voice drops even lower. “Not even close.”
She stares at him, blinking once. Twice. And then, completely unexpectedly, they both burst into laughter.
It’s breathless and messy and real; the kind of laughter that melts into the tiles and the countertops and every breath of air between them. Her forehead drops to his shoulder. His hands settle on her waist.
And then, like all laughter does, it fades, leaving something quieter behind. She pulls back to look at him and smiles - not a smirk or a tease, but something deep and incandescent. The kind of smile that comes when you’re not bracing anymore, but when you’ve let hope take root and grow.
He watches her, and it absolutely wrecks him. That she looks at him like this. That he gets her.
“I love you,” he says.
It slips out like breath. Like gravity. Like the only truth that’s ever mattered.
Her mouth opens. Closes.
“You what?” she says softly.
He swallows. “I… didn’t mean to blurt it out. But I do. I love you, Emily.”
She freezes for a split second, blinking at him, her throat thick with everything she doesn’t know how to say all at once.
Then, finally, she exhales. A full-body, eyes-crinkling, breathtaking smile blooms out of her like sunlight; ecstasy, awe, gratitude all rolled into one. She looks radiant. Uninhibited. Utterly happy. And it almost undoes him.
Aaron feels something sharp catch in his throat - something warm and bright and completely terrifying. Because this is what it looks like when the person you love is happy to love you back.
“I love you too,” she says at last, voice wrecked with wonder. “Even if your folding technique is a war crime.”
He chuckles and kisses her again. Then she reaches for the recipe card, scribbles a few adjustments, and tucks it into the drawer under the coffee machine.
They forget to set a timer. The cookies come out just a little darker than planned.
She eats three anyway.
#10
They’re living together now, in his quiet neighborhood with wide sidewalks and a bakery two blocks away that Emily insists is “dangerously close.” The apartment still smells faintly like old books and sandalwood and him, but more and more, it’s starting to smell like them. Like coffee and lavender and clean sheets and rain.
They’ve made a habit of grocery shopping together: Sunday mornings, reusable bags, her handwritten list, and at least one mild debate over yogurt brands. She handles the produce, and he’s in charge of the dry goods. They bicker in low voices about whether or not they really need three different types of cheese (Emily wins that debate, of course), and discuss the merits of different pasta shapes (rigatoni and linguine being their favourites).
By the time they’re loading bags into the trunk, she notices the small pack of caramel-filled chocolates tucked between the linguine and the lemons. She picks it up with a knowing grin. “You sneak this in every time.”
He shrugs as he closes the hatch. “I like seeing you eat something sweet after yelling at the onions.”
She laughs, shakes her head, and leans in to kiss his cheek. “You’re absurd.”
He catches her wrist gently, eyes affectionate and loving. “You love me for it.”
She smirks. “Unfortunately.”
When they get home, she sneaks two of the chocolates on the couch before the groceries are even fully unpacked, barefoot and a little smug from the sugar. He doesn’t even try to swipe the bag from her, because that’d be a losing battle.
Instead, he watches her, memorising the moment.
#11
The weekend starts like any other Saturday. The bakery two blocks from their apartment is tucked between a flower shop and a used bookstore that only ever seems to carry titles Emily already owns. It’s become a shared ritual: her picking out something flaky and overfilled with cream, him pretending he doesn’t want any and then stealing the best bite.
She doesn’t suspect a thing. The barista, a college student named Jules, greets them with a familiar grin. “Morning, guys. The usual?”
“Yes, please,” Emily says as she inspects the pastry case like it’s an evidence board. “I need something extra ridiculous today.”
Aaron just nods, hands in his pockets, looking, if she’s honest, a little too smug for someone who didn’t even order a croissant.
They sit at their usual table by the window. She flips through a magazine while he pretends to check emails, and when Jules brings over their box, it’s with an oddly triumphant flourish. “Enjoy,” she says, a little too brightly. “And congrats.”
Emily blinks. “Congrats on what?”
Jules just walks away, clearly thrilled with herself. Suspicious, Emily lifts the lid of the box.
Inside is her usual chocolate eclair… and next to it, a miniature cake shaped like a ring box. It’s a perfect replica: fondant-covered, sugar-detailed, and ridiculously precise. As precise as he is.
She snorts. “You did not.”
Aaron just raises an eyebrow. Nestled right beside the edible fake is the real thing: a velvet box, open, the ring glinting quietly in the morning light.
A quiet gasp escapes her. For a long moment, neither of them says anything. The shop continues to hum around them - coffee machines, glassware clinking, and the low murmur of families ordering brunch.
“Seriously?” she finally says. “You proposed to me with a pastry?”
He smiles. “You’ve eaten a pastry every Saturday since we moved in together. This felt fitting.”
She huffs, all mock indignation. Her lips twitch at the corners. “You’re lucky I love you. And that I didn’t eat the ring.”
He leans forward slightly, elbows on the table. “At least I didn’t hide it in a bag of caramel chocolates.”
She laughs, surprised and delighted. “Too obvious?”
“Way too obvious,” he quips.
She looks down again at the velvet box, and then back up at him, her eyes bright and glassy.
He takes her hand. “Is that a yes?”
She squeezes his fingers. “It’s a yes. But I’m still eating the eclair first.”
Relief floods his face and softens into something radiant. He exhales like he’s been holding his breath for a year. It hits him all at once that she said yes; that she's his future. The happiness blooms too fast to hide.
“Fair.”
They walk home hand-in-hand, and he can’t stop glancing at her as though he’s still waiting for her to change her mind. But she just keeps smiling and licking eclair filling off her thumb, like she’s never been more certain.
#12
Years later, the kitchen is filled with flour and chaos and love. The twins are elbow-deep in batter, arguing about whose turn it is to stir, and Aaron is doing his best to referee while keeping the eggs from hitting the floor.
Jack, now tall and steady and effortlessly kind, is leaning against the counter with a smirk. “Mom always likes cookies after dinner,” he says knowingly as he hands Aaron the measuring cups. “You have to make them just right.”
Aaron smiles. “That’s the plan.”
He pulls a weathered index card from the drawer - the one that’s been folded and unfolded so many times the ink has started to fade. Emily’s handwriting is still scrawled across the top in looping script: “Grown-up cookies (but kids love them too).” He holds it carefully, smoothing the corner where she once doodled a tiny heart. “These are her favourite,” he explains, mostly to the younger kids now watching with wide eyes. “We used to bake them every Sunday.”
His daughter, flour smudged across her cheek and a spitting image of Emily, looks up at him. “Is that why we’re surprising her?”
He nods. “Exactly.”
As he glances down at the recipe card, he sees Emily as she was all those years ago - her hair tousled from sex and sleep, giggling as she licked butter off her finger, smiling so wide he could barely breathe. The first time he told her he loved her, it was right here, in this kitchen, with chocolate on her lips and cookie dough on her hands.
He’s sure she remembers, too.
Aaron calls out the remaining instructions with the surgical precision of a briefing at Quantico, albeit much more gently. The twins solemnly watch him slide the tray into the oven, while Jack, ever the responsible big brother, checks the temperature one last time. The door shuts with a soft click.
A collective exhale follows. Tiny flour-covered hands dust off on aprons (gifted by Penelope, of course). Someone tries to sneak a spoonful of leftover raw dough from the bowl. There’s a shriek, a mock scolding, and then laughter - because how could Aaron stay stern in the face of this kind of mischief? It’s exactly the kind of mischief that made him fall in love with Emily in the first place, and now it lives in their children too. Unapologetic joy, fearless and loud and full of life, that he’d never thought he’d be lucky enough to have.
This is the life she’s given him.
Years ago, he was the only one who knew about her sweet tooth. He’d slipped treats onto her desk; into her go-bag. Now he’s teaching her children how to make them for her, because she still smiles the same way when she sees them, like all those years ago in Houston. He couldn’t put a finger on it back then, but now he knows. She smiles like someone who’s loved and knows it.
When Emily walks in minutes later, the house already smells like brown sugar and chocolate, and all of them are gathered around the kitchen island like they’ve done this a hundred times.
She freezes in the doorway, utterly delighted. “Are those…?”
Jack grins. “Your cookies.”
The kids swarm her. She laughs, radiant, and catches Aaron’s eye over their heads. He gives her the smallest, softest smile.
She wraps her arms around him from the side, presses a kiss to his temple, and whispers, “You’re still slipping me sweets.”
They all laugh. He hums. “And I always will.”