Chapter Text
The first thing she notices when she wakes up is how warm she is. For a moment, she sinks into it, sighs contentedly as she almost lets the warmth and the comfort lull her back to sleep, but then she realises she’s not alone in bed, that the warmth she was enjoying was radiating off the person lying behind her, his arm heavy across her waist.
That’s when she notices she has a headache too.
She doesn’t have to turn her head to know who is behind her, and she knows she’ll smell his cologne on her sheets for weeks to come, no matter how much she washes them.
They’d come home from Texas and gone straight to a bar, Penelope’s idea of course, and Emily hadn’t taken much persuasion. For once, Aaron hadn’t either, the weight of the case they’d come back from almost visible on his shoulders, the tightness in his jaw obvious from all the way across the other side of the jet. She’d been delighted that he was coming with them, all the while trying to tell herself she hadn’t been jealous when Meghan Kane had flirted with him so openly.
He offered to take her home as the evening wrapped up, his intentions pure, his desire to be a gentleman overriding everything else, and she accepted, offering him a drink before he left to go home himself. She kissed him first, that much she did remember, and he’d hesitated, asking if she was sure before she kissed him again instead of answering, her inhibitions lowered, the need to know what it would feel like to be with him finally winning out, the alcohol they’d had the excuse she’d been waiting for, something they could pin this on in the morning even though neither of them were that drunk.
He’d taken her apart slowly, with a dexterity she thinks shouldn’t have surprised her. She wonders if having a taste of something she couldn’t have properly was worth it. If she could look at him in the sharp-edged suits he wore to work and call him Hotch after she’d gasped his first name when they tipped over the edge together, her own name whispered against her chest as he shuddered against her.
She wonders what she should do, whether she should move or how she’ll slip out of his grip without him noticing, but he wakes up too, his grip on her tightening for a moment before he sucks in a sharp breath and sits up. She does the same, holding the covers over her chest, covering a bruise he’d sucked into her skin as she clears her throat, her cheeks warm as everything hits her all at once, the consequences of what had seemed like a good idea last night laid out in front of her in the cold light of day.
“Hi.” He says first, an apology she doesn’t want or need already painted across his face when she turns to look at him.
“Hi.”
___
It’s the case that plants the idea in her mind, a seed she doesn’t notice at first, as she’s lost in thought about a little boy who’d killed his brother, and a family that had been broken as a result.
Aaron checks in on her before they board the jet home. He’s kind as he pulls her aside, his concern a nice distraction as she tries not to look at his hands, tries not to remember how they felt pressed against her bare skin, and she says she’s okay, even though she’s not sure it’s true.
They’d agreed it was a one time thing, that nothing could come of the stolen hours they’d had together. Things had been awkward for a day or two, but then it all went back to normal, their friendship seemingly unaffected.
She should have known it was too good to be true.
When she gets home, exhausted by the case and the day she’d had, she goes straight to the medicine cabinet in her bathroom looking for Tylenol to stave off the headache she’d felt building all day. It’s only when she’s immediately met with the sight of an unopened box of tampons that it hits her square in the chest, the seed of doubt she’d already had blooming in her chest, the flowers of panic pressing against her lungs as she covers her mouth with her hand.
It all falls into place. Her exhaustion, the nausea she’d told herself was because of the case they’d been on. The soreness in her breasts that she thought was because her period was due soon. The panic is familiar, an old friend wrapping its hand around her throat as she tries and fails to calm herself down, her throat immediately dry as she continues to stare at the box of tampons, wondering how she’d managed to get herself into this situation again, after decades of being so careful that ex-boyfriends had mocked her for it.
“Shit.”
She goes straight to a pharmacy. There are more options than there were the last time she’d done this, a whole aisle dedicated to a test that had only just been invented when she was 15 and terrified. She buys several different tests as well as some candy and toiletries she doesn’t need, hoping she’ll somehow hide her main purchase from the teenage cashier.
Taking the test is easier than it was last time, and the wait is nowhere near as long. She sees the results start to appear on the tests lined up on her bathroom counter before she’s even finished reading one of the pamphlets, a row of pluses and two lines and a single word in digital boxes telling her what she already knew, something she can no longer deny.
She was pregnant. With her boss's baby.
She picks one of them up, her hands shaking as she tries to look closer, as if the result would somehow change, and she blows out a shaky breath.
“Fuck.”
___
She knows she has to tell him.
The moment she decides this is something she wants, something that she can have this time, she knows she can’t keep it to herself. Not only because he was her boss, and practicality insisted that she needed to tell him she was pregnant, but because he deserved to know.
He was a good man, and he deserved to know he was going to be a father again.
She takes her chance when she overhears him telling Dave that Jack was with Haley for the weekend. She goes to his place, the ultrasound photo she’d had taken that day burning a hole through her purse and against her side.
He’s confused when he opens the door, his eyebrows furrowed as he tilts his head, “Emily?”
“Hotch,” she says, clearing her throat and shaking her head as she corrects herself, “Aaron,” she says, “Can I come in?”
He nods, stepping back to let her pass, “Is everything okay?”
“I…” she drifts off, the way she’d rehearsed this on the drive over gone, her mind blank as she remembers how badly things had gone when she’d told John the same thing over 20 years ago, “I have something I need to tell you.”
“Okay,” he says, watching her carefully before he nods over to the couch, “Want to sit down?” He offers, and she smiles and sits, “Do you want a drink? I have some of that beer you like.”
“No,” she says, firmer than she intends to, shocking both of them, “I’m okay.” She adds, and he sits with her, the distance between them careful, as if anything less would make them cross a boundary they promised they’d maintain. She knows there’s no way of mincing her words, of saying what she needed to say gently, so she just says it, changing both of their futures in just two words. “I’m pregnant.”
His concern turns into shock, his eyes wide as he looks her up and down, his eyes lingering on her stomach before his eyes meet hers, “You’re…”
She smiles tightly and reaches into her purse, pulling out the copy of the ultrasound she’d bought him, “It’s yours.”
He takes the ultrasound and their fingers brushing as he looks at the grainy black and white picture, his expression unreadable as he studies it, “And you’re…”
“Keeping it,” she confirms, her lips pressed together as he looks back up at her, “You don’t have to be involved if you don’t want to be-”
“Who said I didn’t want to be,” he says, furrowing his brows, “I…I’ll help.”
“I don’t need help,” she insists, although she isn’t sure it’s true. “I thought you should know, that’s all.”
He nods and reaches over, grabbing her hand, touching her for the first time since the morning they woke up wrapped around each other, “I’ll help.”
His earnestness makes her suck in a breath, and she nods, relieved and grateful in a way she hadn’t anticipated.
“Okay.”
___
She stays after everyone else leaves the hospital. No one on the team says anything, and she’s grateful for it, that she doesn’t have to think of a reason why she doesn’t want to leave his side.
She isn’t even sure how she’d put it into words if she were asked.
He was her friend. The father of her baby - the baby no one but them and her doctor knew about yet - and the man she was worried she was falling in love with.
There was a moment when she was standing in his apartment, just feet away from where she told him about the baby, staring at a drying pool of his blood, when she’d almost thrown up. The metallic smell in the air mixing with the feeling she couldn’t allow herself to name as she realised he was missing. Everything she felt for him, everything she tried to pretend she didn’t feel for him, climbing up her throat, threatening to force its way out until she swallowed it back. She didn’t think about anything other than calling Penelope, grateful that she remembered to call him Hotch, not Aaron, when her friend answered.
When he woke up, the team all around him, and his eyes met hers, she briefly worried he’d give them away. That he’d utter the secret they were keeping, his usual sharpness lost somewhere between the pain he was in and the medication in his system, but he immediately asks questions about Foyet instead.
After he talks to Haley and to Jack, and sends them away, the team eventually leave too, forced home by their exhaustion. Worn out by coming straight from Canada, from the things they’d seen there, to this. It was enough to make them dead on their feet.
“I guess there’s no use in asking you if you’ll go into hiding?”
His question takes her by surprise. She thought he was asleep still, but when she looks at him, her attention drawn from the book in her hands that she’d barely been reading, he’s looking at her in a way that makes her think he might have been for a while.
“No,” she says simply, “There isn’t.”
“I…I don’t know if I can keep you safe.”
She smiles and lets her book drop to her lap, and she reaches out to him, putting her hand on his arm, “I can keep myself safe. And the baby.”
He nods, his eyes shining in a way she pretends she doesn’t see, “I’m sorry.”
“For what? Knocking me up in the first place? Or getting attacked by a sociopath in your own home?” She quips, “Because neither of those things are your fault.”
He chokes on a laugh before groaning, “Don’t make me laugh, it hurts.”
“Sorry,” she says, squeezing his hand again, “We’ll figure it all out, I promise.”
He nods, and she isn’t sure if it’s because he agrees, or if he has faith in her that she’d never quite had in herself.
___
By the time he’s back at work, the team know she’s pregnant.
They don’t know Aaron is the father, despite Penelope’s best efforts to find out who it was, and Emily is grateful that, for now, some of her secrets are still hers. She knows it’s inevitable that they’ll find out. She and Aaron were going to raise the baby as friends. There would be handovers and appointments, and his name on the baby’s birth certificate, but for now, all they knew was that she was having a baby.
And, that might be all they ever know if she ends up killing Aaron for his stupidity.
Derek has to stop her from following Aaron into the house Call was in, offering himself up as bait without second thought about his own safety. All Derek does is hold out a hand to stop her, casting a glance down at her still flat stomach, and she’s frozen in place, her jaw tight as she hears a gunshot ring out from inside.
She keeps it together on the drive back to Aaron’s, and she follows him in, lets the door shut behind her.
“Aaron-”
“Don’t,” he says, his jaw tight as he cuts her off, “Just…don’t.”
She stares at him for a second, anger swelling in her gut as she crosses her arms across her chest, ignoring his request. He wasn’t her boss here. He was her friend. The father of her kid.
And he was an idiot.
“You could have died,” she says, staring him down when he turns to look at her, “You just…walked in there-”
“I was doing my job-”
She scoffs, “That isn’t the job,” she half shouts, closing her eyes and shaking her head at herself as she tries to calm down, “You put yourself in danger. What about Jack? He’s going to need a father to come home to.”
He furrows his brows, anger pooling in the line between them, “Now hang on a minute-”
“And what about me?” She asks, throwing her hands up, “What about the baby?” She adds, shaking her head, furious at herself for the tears she feels gathering in her eyes, “You can’t just do that, okay? You’re mean to…” She drifts off when her voice cracks, and she looks away, “You said you’d be here to help me,” she wipes her cheek and looks back at him, “And you can’t do that if you’re dead. So I need you to get your act together.”
She watches as the fight drains out of him, his shoulders slumping as he nods, “I’m sorry,” he says, “You’re right, I just…”
He drifts off, and she closes the gap between them, pulls him into a hug that he returns, his arms tight around her.
“You’re not alone, Aaron.” She says, swallowing thickly, closing her eyes as she presses her cheek against his chest, hearing his heartbeat from the source before she pulls back to look at him. “You’ve got me.”
She just hopes it’s enough.