prompt for Aaron and Emily- Sean is in town and he immediately goes for Emily but he has no idea of Aaron’s feelings
Read on Ao3 for the full version!
This version is rated T...the other one is rated M and is longer
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The heavy silence of the empty BAU bullpen always felt different at night. During the day, it was a chaotic symphony of ringing phones, clicking keyboards, and the familiar, comforting banter of his team. But at 8:30 PM on a Friday, the vast room was nothing but a graveyard of shadows and glowing screens.
Aaron Hotchner sat at his desk, a stack of case files open in front of him. To anyone walking past his glass doors, he looked like the picture of unwavering focus; the stoic, dedicated Unit Chief doing what he did best.
In reality, he hadn’t read a single line of the page in front of him for over an hour.
His mind was stuck in a vicious, agonizing loop, rewinding back to earlier that week when Sean had unceremoniously dropped by the office to surprise him. Aaron remembered the initial swell of quiet, protective pride that had warmed his chest. Sean wasn’t the impulsive, defensive kid running from his own shadow anymore. He was clean, steady, dressed well, and smiling a genuine smile. He was finally doing well.
But then, Sean had met the team.
Aaron closed his eyes, the memory vivid enough to leave a physical ache behind his ribs. He had stood right here by his desk, watching through the glass as Sean charmed the room. He had watched the exact moment Sean’s eyes locked onto Emily Prentiss. And he had watched the way Emily’s polite, guarded "work smile" had softened into something bright, easy, and genuinely captivated.
The real sucker punch, though, had come later that afternoon in the breakroom. Aaron had been walking by, a stack of profiles in hand, when he overheard Sean’s smooth, effortless voice: “I’m only in town for a few days, Emily. Let me take you to dinner. Just a casual night out.”
Aaron had frozen in the hallway, the breath catching in his throat. He had waited for Emily to decline. He had waited for her to make an excuse about paperwork, or the job, or the unspoken rule about family members. But instead, there had been a beat of hesitation, a fleeting glance Emily had thrown toward Aaron’s empty office, before she quietly replied, “I’d love to, Sean. That sounds really nice.”
Now, Aaron looked down at his watch. 8:37 PM.
They were at the restaurant right now. Sean was likely sitting across from her, making her laugh with that easy, unburdened humour that Aaron had lost somewhere in the tragedies of his past.
With a slow, heavy exhale, Aaron finally closed the file folder. His knuckles were white against the cardboard. He forced himself to pack his briefcase, compartmentalizing the sharp twist of jealousy in his gut with the ruthless efficiency he usually reserved for unsubs.
He told himself he had to get used to this. If his brother was going to date the woman Aaron had spent the last several months quietly, desperately falling for, then Aaron would step aside. He had to. Sean was whole. Sean wasn’t haunted by the ghosts of a hundred crime scenes or the grinding, daily trauma of the Bureau. Sean could give Emily a normal life. A life that breathed outside of a cemetery.
Aaron loved her enough to let her have that normalcy. Even if it killed him.
He turned off his desk lamp, plunging the office into darkness, grabbed his briefcase, and walked out into the quiet night.
The drive back to his apartment passed in a blur of passing streetlights and the rhythmic hum of the tires against the asphalt. Aaron didn’t turn on the radio. The silence inside the SUV was heavy, but it was preferable to whatever pop song or late-night talk show host might try to force its way into his thoughts.
By the time he pulled into his driveway and cut the engine, the exhaustion had settled deep into his bones. It wasn't just the physical toll of a seventy-hour work week; it was the emotional weight of a decision he had spent all evening making. He was letting her go before he had ever truly allowed himself to hold on.
He grabbed his briefcase from the passenger seat, stepped out into the cool night air, and walked up the front porch. The neighbourhood was quiet, dark, and utterly still.
Aaron moved routinely. He slid his key into the deadbolt. He turned it, hearing the familiar, solid click of the lock sliding back. He stepped inside- then stopped. His hand was firm on the doorknob when a sudden, sharp sound cut through the quiet.
The slam of a car door, followed by the sound of a vehicle driving away. Down at the very edge of his driveway.
Aaron froze, his hand still gripping the brass knob. His instincts, honed by years of hunting the worst humanity had to offer, kicked in instantly. He didn't turn around immediately; instead, he tracked the sound of hurried, uneven footsteps rushing up the concrete path toward his porch.
His breath hitched. He knew that voice. He knew it better than his own.
He spun around, his heart dropping instantly into a cold pit of panic. Standing at the bottom of his porch steps was Emily.
But it wasn't the composed, lethal BAU agent he worked beside every day. Her dark hair was a wild, windswept halo around her face, her coat was completely unbuttoned, and she was breathing in shallow, ragged gasps. In her right hand, she loosely clutched a pair of expensive evening heels.
She was entirely barefoot on the cold concrete.
"Emily?" Aaron stepped away from the door, his briefcase slipping slightly in his grip as he rushed toward the edge of the porch. His mind immediately went to the darkest possible scenario. An ambush. A case. An accident. "Emily, what’s wrong? Did something happen? Is Sean okay?"
He reached his hands out, instinctively preparing to catch her, to anchor her, but Emily held up a frantic, trembling hand, stopping him in his tracks. She was pacing a tight line at the base of the steps, her chest heaving as she shook her head.
"Don't," she breathed, her voice thick with a chaotic mix of adrenaline and frustration. "Just…don't say anything yet, Aaron. Please. Just let me speak. Because if I don't say it right now, right this second, I am going to lose my nerve and call that cab back."
Aaron lowered his hands slowly, his brows furrowing in utter confusion. The panic about an unsub faded, replaced by a strange, soaring tension that tightened the space between them. "Emily, you're freezing. Come inside-"
"No," she interrupted, looking up at him with a fierce, raw intensity that locked him in place. "If I go inside, I'll think about protocols, and I'll think about the Bureau, and I'll convince myself to use logic. And I don't want to be logical tonight. I've been so incredibly, profoundly stupid all week, Aaron."
She stopped pacing, dropping her hands to her sides, her knuckles white around the straps of her shoes.
"The date was perfect," she rambled, her thoughts overlapping as the words finally spilled out of her like a broken dam. "That’s the worst part of it. Sean was wonderful. He was funny, he was attentive, he carried himself with this... this effortless light that I haven't seen in ages. He is a perfect gentleman. But we were sitting at the restaurant, and he laughed at something the waiter said, and all I could do was sit there and realize how desperately I wished it was your laugh. He reached across the table to touch my hand, and I had to pull away because it wasn't your hand."
Aaron stood entirely paralyzed on the top step. The stoic Unit Chief, the man who always had an answer, a profile, a protocol, was entirely gone. He couldn't breathe.
"And when he drove me back to my apartment..." Emily swallowed hard, a faint, self-deprecating laugh escaping her as a single tear tracked down her cheek. "He went to kiss me goodnight. And I panicked. I practically ran away from him because it hit me all at once. The only reason I even told him yes in the breakroom was because he carries a ghost of you. Because he has your smile, and he has a fraction of your shadow, and I tried to use him as a distraction. But I don't want a substitute, Aaron. I don't want Sean. I want you."
The silence stretched between them, thick and suffocating.
Emily watched his face, her eyes searching the familiar, sharp lines of his features for any sign of a breakthrough. But Aaron remained entirely paralyzed. His mind, usually a hyper-efficient machine capable of analyzing complex behavioural patterns in seconds, had completely short-circuited. The sheer, impossible gravity of what she had just said refused to compute.
To Emily, however, his stillness looked like a verdict.
The raw, desperate courage that had carried her all the way up his driveway suddenly evaporated, leaving behind a cold, crushing wave of humiliation. The fight drained out of her posture, her shoulders dropping as she took a slow step backward.
"Right," she whispered, her voice cracking under the weight of sudden, intense regret. She looked down at the gravel, unable to hold his gaze any longer. "I shouldn't have come. God, Aaron, I'm sorry. I just ruined everything, didn't I? The team, us, work... Just…just forget I said anything."
She turned sharply on her bare heel, intending to march right back to the street and disappear into the night.
She didn't even make it a foot.
The spell holding Aaron captive broke violently. Before his brain could formulate a protocol or remind him of the Bureau's handbook, his body moved on pure, unadulterated instinct. He crossed the distance between them in a single, sweeping stride. His briefcase slipped from his fingers, hitting the porch step with a dull thud that went entirely unnoticed.
He reached out, his hands catching her by the arms and spinning her back around. Before she could even gasp, his hands moved up to frame her face, his fingers tangling deeply into her dark, windswept hair. He leaned down and kissed her.
It wasn't a tentative, testing kiss. It was an explosive release of months of repressed, agonizing longing; a silent confession of every late-night thought and stolen glance he had ever kept locked away. Emily froze for a fraction of a second in sheer shock, her evening heels slipping from her hand and clattering against the concrete. Then, a soft, breathless sound escaped her as she collapsed into him, her arms throwing themselves around his neck to pull him impossibly closer.
When he finally broke the kiss, he didn't go far. He kept his forehead pressed firmly against hers, his breath hitching as his thumbs traced the high curve of her cheekbones, anchoring her there.
"I haven't been able to focus all day," Aaron confessed, his voice rough and uncharacteristically breathless, stripping away every ounce of the stoic Unit Chief. "Not since I overheard him ask you out in the breakroom."
Emily blinked up at him, her lips slightly parted, a faint, disbelieving laugh escaping her chest despite the tears still warming her cheeks. "Why didn't you say anything? Why did you just stand there and let me go?"
"Because he can give you a normal life, Emily," Aaron said, the old defence mechanisms making one last, desperate attempt to protect her from himself. "A happy one. Free of the shadows, free of the unsubs, free of... all of this. I didn't want to stand in the way of you having a life that doesn't belong to a graveyard."
Emily stared at him, her eyes softening with a fierce, protective affection that made his breath catch. She reached up, her hands resting over his wrists.
"Did you ever stop to think, you idiot, that I could be happy with you?"
Aaron’s chest hitched, his throat tightening as the old doubts flared. "I... I couldn't risk doing that to you-"
Emily moved her hand, her fingers pressing gently but firmly against his lips to cut him off entirely. A small, beautiful, knowing smile touched her mouth.
"Shut up and kiss me again, Aaron."
He didn't argue. He closed the remaining distance, his arms wrapping securely around her waist to lift her slightly as he kissed her again. Guided by a shared, urgent certainty, they finally stepped across the threshold, Aaron reaching back to guide the heavy front door until it clicked firmly shut. Leaving the cold night, the ghosts of their job, and the rest of the Hotchners entirely outside in the dark.
Thank you for the prompt!! I had fun writing this. Haven't touched Aaron/Emily in over 14 years...so this was a nice dive back into their pairing.
I'm always accepting prompts!!! As long as they aren't character/reader
