thinking about how scully is on vacation and taking a relaxing bubble bath and then is like "hmmm, this is nice. but you know what would make this absolutely perfect? calling mulder so we can talk about zombies"
When Emily looks up, and sees him in the mirror, she thinks she’s mistaken, that she’s seeing a ghost of her past instead of the person who is really standing there. She turns so quickly that it hurts her neck for a second, and her eyes go wide, a surprised laugh escaping her lungs as their eyes meet and she comes face to face with Aaron Hotchner for the first time in years.
AKA photos of Thomas Gibson doing Reformer Pilates were put on the internet, and it sent this writer's brain into overdrive.
-x-
Hi friends,
Now, when I started doing Reformer Pilates a couple of months back, did I think I'd be using what I learnt as plot for a Hotchniss smut fic? No.
Should I have given my track record?
Yes. And that's on me.
Anyway, as you might have seen, pictures of Thomas Gibson doing Reformer have popped up on the internet and, unsurprisingly, I couldn't help myself.
As always, let me know what you think <3
-x-
Warnings: 18+, smut
Words: 4.3k
Read over on Ao3, or below the cut
She hadn’t been to a Pilates class since her break-up with Andrew.
She wonders if that is why she feels strangely nervous as she walks into the studio, if something about it all reminds her of her ex and everything they’d once had. She tries to shake it off, tells herself this is different - that it’s Reformer Pilates, not Mat Pilates - and that she needed to do this.
It was Penelope who had gently pushed her into finding something to do just for her outside of work. Between Voit and all the bullshit that came with him, the loss of Will, and her kidnapping, Emily knew she was struggling. She was smoking more than she had in years and was eating most of her meals from takeout cartons in her office. After finding her all but falling asleep at her desk one evening, Penelope told her that she needed to change something, her smile kind but sad as she said they couldn’t lose her too.
“Besides,” she’d added, her smile coy, “Maybe you’ll meet a guy.”
As Emily walks into class to find she’s the second to last person to arrive, the room full of other women ranging from her age down to some in their 20s, she doubts that. A tall woman in a matching workout set walks over, her smile soft as she greets Emily.
“Hi, my name is Grace, and I’m the instructor today,” she says, her stature matching her name as she all but glides over. “What’s your name?”
“Emily.”
Grace nods as she ticks her off the list on her phone, and then she gestures to the remaining Reformers, “Just pick any bed. Is this your first class?” She asks, and Emily nods, “I’ll explain everything when everyone gets here.”
Emily looks at the Reformer, her eyes wide at the equipment that looked more like a torture device than anything else, and she sighs to herself. For someone who had spent so many years chasing death, she did enjoy the irony in what she was now doing to avoid it.
She slips off her shoes and leaves them in the corner with everyone else's and sits on the bed, exchanging a polite smile with the woman next to her. The door to the studio opens again, and Grace smiles.
“Aaron, you were cutting it fine,” she says, “I thought you weren’t going to make it.”
When Emily looks up, and sees him in the mirror, she thinks she’s mistaken, that she’s seeing a ghost of her past instead of the person who is really standing there. She turns so quickly that it hurts her neck for a second, and her eyes go wide, a surprised laugh escaping her lungs as their eyes meet and she comes face to face with Aaron Hotchner for the first time in years.
He looked good. He’d aged like a fine wine, salt and pepper flecks of grey throughout his hair, that was longer than it had ever been when she’d known him, and similar grey in the slight beard he had. The lines around his eyes were a little deeper than they used to be, but he looked relaxed, his smile a little easier than it had ever been.
A familiar twisting in her gut, and a matching fizz in her blood, has her mentally chastising herself for deciding to come bare-faced to the studio, leaving her wondering if he thought the years had been as kind to her as she thought they had been to him.
There had always been something between them. A static in the air that she knew he felt too, something that pulled them into each other in a way that left her breathless whenever she thought about it. Life had always got in the way. They’d been kept apart by circumstance and sadness and loss, and for a long time he’d always been her biggest what if. The thought of what could have been between them was something that kept her awake more nights than she’d care to admit, especially in recent months since Will’s sudden death. There was nothing quite like a loss that made you reassess what you had and what you wished you had.
And now he was standing right in front of her, looking irritatingly handsome in his t-shirt, gym shorts and pilates socks. Her only comfort is that he looks just as shocked to see her as she is to see him, his eyes not leaving hers as they continue to stare at each other
“Aaron?”
“Emily?”
They speak in unison, and for a moment it’s just them, everything else slipping away as they look at each other, both frozen to the spot, but then Grace clears her throat.
“You two know each other?” She says, “That’s cool,” she adds, nodding towards the one Reformer left free, the one on Emily’s right, “Come on, Aaron, we need to get started.
Emily looks at him again as he settles next to her, their eyes meeting as they both nod, a silent agreement that they’d talk when they were done.
She does her best to focus on the instructions Grace gives them, but as the class goes on, she keeps finding her gaze drifting to Aaron occasionally, fascinated by how good he is at this. It was obvious this wasn’t his first class, especially since the instructor knew him, but as she sees him effortlessly stay in tabletop as she feels the ache already settling into her core, she wonders just how often he’d come here.
How long had he been home without coming to see them?
Why hadn’t he called her?
When the class is over, Emily thanks Grace but keeps her eyes on Aaron. As much as she doesn’t think he’d slip out without saying goodbye, or even hello, she doesn’t want to risk it. He waits for her at the entrance to the studio, his hands in his pockets as he presses his lips together in a tight smile.
“Hi.”
“Hi,” she replies, chuckling disbelievingly as she shakes her head at him. “What are you doing here?”
He smiles at her, that same relaxed smile she’d seen when he walked in reflected in the mirror, and she doesn’t know what she wants to do more - punch him or kiss him
“In Pilates, or DC?” He asks, smiling politely at Grace as she walks past them, her curiosity obvious as she tries to pretend she isn’t watching them.
“Both.” Emily replies, “You…you never said you were back. You could have called”
His smile fades, guilt flashing in his eyes, and he nods, “There’s a coffee place half a block from here,” he says, pointing over his shoulder, “My treat?”
She tries to pretend like she’s thinking about it, but she knows he sees through it, that he sees through her like she’s made of glass. He was one of the only people who’d ever been able to do that, and it makes her blood fizz again, a familar feeling building in her gut.
“Fine,” she says, “But you’re buying me a croissant as well.”
He smiles again and nods, pushing the door open and letting her walk through first, “You can have whatever you want.”
He starts by explaining the Pilates.
He’d injured his shoulder 7 months ago, and his physical therapist had recommended Pilates as a long-term plan to improve his strength and mobility. He’d started at Jack’s insistence and found that he enjoyed it, that it was one of the few exercises he could do without feeling too old to be doing it, and it was something just for him. As the months had gone on, he started to feel stronger and more agile than he had in years, and he carried on, delighted by his new lease on life as he slipped into his early 60s.
“Then why were you in a beginner's class?” She asks, furrowing her brow as she sips her coffee, “You clearly knew what you were doing.”
He smiles, and she realises she’s given away a little too much about how much she’d been watching him.
“The studio makes you do a certain number of beginner classes when you join,” he explains, “That was my last one before I can move up.”
If she believed in fate, she’d think this was it, because what were the chances she’d pick a class on the very last time he’d be going to it?
“So, you live here now?” She asks, and he nods, sighing as he leans in a little, his smile apologetic.
“Jack transferred to Georgetown,” he explains, smiling as he thinks of his son, “He preferred the programme there and is planning on doing his Master's there too. And I want to be close to him,” he says, clearing his throat as he looks down at the table between them, “I want to be closer to home.” They fall into a brief, uncomfortable silence, and he looks up at her. “I was going to call,” he says, and she chuckles in disbelief, “I mean it, I was going to. I just wanted to be settled first,” he explains, “I wanted to have more than an empty house and a membership to a Pilates studio.”
“We would have helped,” she says, “That’s what we do for each other.” She smiles, “Hell, Pen has been helping JJ and the boys move this week.”
He furrows his brow, “They’re moving?”
She blows out a shaky breath, “She couldn’t live there anymore. Not when…not when that’s where it happened.”
Aaron nods, and his smile turns wistful. “I can understand that,” he says, and then he looks at her again, “I was going to call.”
She stares at him, looks for any sign that he’s lying, and then she nods when she doesn’t find it. “Okay,” she says, “I believe you.”
He beams at her, and things feel easier after that, as if it hasn’t been years since they last went for coffee together. She realises just how much she’d missed him, and she buys them another coffee each so they don’t have to say goodbye yet, so this can last as long as possible. She tells him about work, about the job that seemed to be taking more from her than it ever had, and he listens because he gets it, because he’d once lived it himself.
Eventually, they slowly leave the cafe, and they stand in the street outside, neither one of them sure what to do or say.
“We should do this again,” she says, “Coffee that is,” she says, chuckling at herself, “I’m not sure Reformer is for me.”
He smiles, “I think you did better than you think you did,” he says, “But yeah, we should do this again.” His smile turns nervous, and he slips his hands into his pockets again, looking anywhere but at her, “Or we could go for dinner sometime?”
She hears what he hasn’t said, hears the years of everything they hadn’t said to each other wrapped up in his nervous question, and she smiles, deciding that for once, she was going to do something she wanted without thinking about all the reasons why she shouldn’t.
“It’s a date,” she says, repeating words she’d said to him years ago, their meaning completely different this time around, her smile getting wider as his eyes snap to hers, hope pressed into the flecks of gold she’d fallen for years ago.
“Really?” He asks, and she nods, closing the gap between them to stamp a kiss against his cheek, the press of his stubble against her lips enough to make her breath catch in her chest.
“Really,” she replies as she pulls back, “Call me,” she quips, raising her eyebrow, “And we’ll figure out a date.”
“Okay,” he says, and they exchange goodbyes, neither one of them really wanting to be the first to turn away. She eventually turns and heads down the street, furrowing her brow as her phone rings from her purse. She laughs when she sees his name on the screen, and she answers, turning to look back at him standing in the spot she’d left him, “How does tonight sound?”
“Tonight sounds perfect.”
She’s smiling so widely the entire drive home that her cheeks ache, happiness pressed into her dimples as she climbs out of her car and starts to plan what she wants to wear on the date she thinks she’d been waiting years for.
The date she’d been waiting decades for.
Her eyes catch a photo of her, JJ and Penelope hanging proudly on her living room wall, and her smile slowly fades away as she realises she’s going to have to tell them about this.
Fuck.
Penelope was going to be so goddamn smug.
___
There’s a part of her that is worried the date will be awkward. That the shock of seeing each other will dissipate throughout the day, and that reality will set in by the time he comes to pick her up at the time they’d agreed upon.
She booked the restaurant. If there was one thing she knew the Prentiss name was good for in DC, it was a last-minute reservation on a Saturday night. She’d text him the name of the place and said they could meet there, but he insisted on coming to her place first to collect her, the part of him that was still a little old-fashioned winning out.
The moment she sees him on her doorstep, wearing a suit with a tie she’d bought him as a birthday present years ago, flowers in hand, she knew she had nothing to worry about. When he smiles at her, it’s like no time has passed at all, and when she slips her hand into his in the car as he drives them to the restaurant, it’s as if she’s done it a thousand times, not like it was the first.
They talk about anything and everything over dinner. He tells her about Jack, about the girl he was in love with and the career he was planning. She tells him about the team, about the members he knew and the ones he didn’t. Each one of them a part of the family he’d once overseen what felt like a lifetime ago.
When they get back to hers, she wraps her hand around his as they stand on her porch, and she focuses on the press of her palm against his, how it feels like their fingers slot together perfectly as if they were made for each other.
“Want to come in?” She offers, tilting her head towards her front door, hoping her intention is clear, feeling shy about it in a way she doesn’t entirely understand. He smiles and wraps his arm around her, tugging her closer. The press of his body against hers makes her breath catch in her chest.
“Are you sure?” He asks softly, and she leans in, resting her forehead against his, her eyes flickering closed as his breath skips across her cheek. “We only bumped into each other this morning. I don’t want you to look back and think we moved too quickly.”
She shakes her head, and her nose nudges against his. “Aaron, I think we both know we’ve wanted this for years,” she smiles, and he does too, his eyes shining with something she knows is love, “If anything, we’ve gone way, way too slow.”
He laughs, and he’s the one to lean in to kiss her, to break an almost 20-year-long embargo they’d imposed on themselves. She sighs into it, her shoulders relaxing as she wraps her arms around him, pulling him in impossibly closer. She rests her forehead against his when the kiss comes to an end, and she presses her lips together, chasing the taste of him left behind on her skin.
“You’re right,” he says, his attempt to sound a little smug diluted by how breathless he sounds, by the way he grips her hips like she’s the only thing anchoring him to the ground, “We waited way too long to do that.”
“We should go in,” she replies, nudging her nose against his before she pulls back, nodding towards the house across the street, “Otherwise we’ll give my neighbour Ethel a hell of a show.” She quips, and his eyebrows shoot up his forehead, and he looks over, distracted just long enough by the twitching curtains in the front room of the house in question for Emily to dig her keys out of her purse and open the front door. She pushes it open and expects him to be just behind her, but when she turns to look at him, he’s standing there and staring at her, frozen on the spot. “You okay?”
She briefly realises she hasn’t made sure that this isn’t too fast for him, and she feels guilty, shame flaming in her gut until he briefly shakes his head.
“I’m okay,” he says, smiling at her, “I just can’t believe we’re finally here.”
“Me neither,” she replies, her voice quiet, as if she were worried that if she spoke too loudly, if the universe or whoever was listening realised she finally had everything she’d ever wanted, it would get taken away from her just as quickly as she’d got it.
She wraps her hand around his again and encourages him towards her, kissing him again as he steps over the threshold to her home, a shared stride towards the future she liked to think they’d earned.
As soon as the door closes behind them, any hesitation from either of them disappears. He pulls her against him, and she drops her purse, leaving it forgotten by the front door, the contents spilt out against the hardwood. His hands are everywhere, tracing up and down her body, drawing out gasps from her as his fingers skim the hem of her dress.
She isn’t idle. She wraps her arms around his neck and scratches her nails against the base of his scalp, smiling into their kiss as he groans against her. She lets him lead them deeper into her house even though he’d only ever been here for a few minutes when he picked her up for dinner, but she’s too distracted to think, too focused on the size of his hands against her waist, until she feels the smooth wooden top of her dining table against the back of her thighs as Aaron deposits her on it.
She giggles, pulling away from the kiss, breathless, to look up at him, “Aren’t we a little old for sex on the dining table?”
“I’ll be fine,” he quips, “I do Pilates,” he adds, and he smiles as he leans in to kiss her when she raises an eyebrow at him, his lips gently pressed against hers before he pulls back, “Do you trust me?”
It’s a strangely sobering moment in amongst everything else, the way they’d been drunk on each other disappearing in an instant as their eyes meet, everything they’d never said in the air around them.
She nods, and her response feels like three little words wrapped up into one.
“Yes.”
He beams at her, and the seriousness passes as quickly as it had appeared, and then he’s kissing her again, his hand on her cheek as he holds her in place. She hooks a leg around him, determined to maintain some kind of control, and she tugs him in closer, using the opportunity to start to unbutton his shirt. She slips it down off his arms, vaguely hearing the swoosh of it as it hits the floor.
She isn’t sure who takes off her dress, whether it's her, or him or both of them, but suddenly she’s looking at the scars on his chest and abdomen that she’d imagined for years, and he’s doing the same with her. White and silver lines now as flat as they’d ever be that had once been pink and raised. Signs of what they’d survived now part of their topography, part of themselves that they barely paid attention to these days unless an anniversary of a death, or something close to it, rolled around.
“You’re beautiful,” he says, reaching out to trace the four-leafed clover she’d never had covered in the end, the fingers tracing the outside of the brand left by another man, warm and comforting as they steal the breath from her lungs.
She looks up at him, and she reaches out, running her finger over his thickest scar, smiling softly when their eyes meet.
She wasn’t sure who had stolen more from them - time or themselves - but she wasn’t going to waste another second.
“So are you.”
She kisses him, her arms around his shoulders, bare skin touching bare skin, and she sits as close to the edge of the dining table as she can, rolling her hips against his as he slots between her thighs. His fingers skim up her legs, the warmth of his skin against hers in contrast to the cool table beneath her leaving her senses in disarray, everything too much and too little all at once.
Then he touches her, his thumb a whisper against her clit as he pushes her underwear to the side, and she doesn’t recognise the sound that comes out of her. She clings to him, her arms around his shoulders and her legs around his back, and she throws her head back, her eyes closed as she gives in to it.
As she gives in to him.
He pays close attention as he touches her, focusing on what draws soft sighs from her and what pulls out moans. He looks at her like she’s a fine painting and he’s the painter doing everything he can to focus on the details most people would miss.
It’s a pressure that builds low in her gut, a feeling she thinks she might drown in as it starts to press against her lungs until suddenly the dam bursts, her breath catching in her chest as she moans a sound somewhere near his name as she slumps forward, her forehead against his shoulder. She slowly comes back to herself, her senses returning one by one.
The harsh sound of her breath.
The smell of him.
The feel of his skin against hers.
The reassuring words he’s murmuring against her temple as he runs his hand up and down her back.
“Fuck,” she breathes out as her vision finally clears, sitting up a little as she looks him up and down, her eyes briefly lingering on his pants before her eyes meet his, her hands already reaching out for his belt, “You’re wearing too many clothes.”
They get his pants and his underwear off together, and she’s still trying to catch her breath, her lungs stuffed full of pleasure, when her chest catches as she sees the size of him for the first time, a question she’d always had finally answered. She kisses him, her hand wrapped around him, smiling against his lips when he groans against hers.
He steps closer again, and both of them groan as she widens her legs a little and he catches against her still sensitive skin. She pulls back as she wraps her legs around his waist, her forehead against his as she purposely keeps eye contact as he pushes forward, wanting to remember the look on his face for the rest of her life.
“God,” he says, his eyes drifting closed for a moment as he purposely stays still, committing it to memory just as much as she was, “You feel so good, sweetheart.”
“So do you,” she replies, her breath catching again as he kisses her cheek and then her neck as she grasps at his back, “You feel so fucking good.”
She rolls her hips against his, desperate for him to move, and he does, pushing his hips against hers as they start to move together, the creak of her dining table something she barely registers as they pull pleasure from each other as if they had done this before. As if they knew how to unravel each other because they’d stitched the other together in the first place. Time starts to drift around them, everything else but the two of them slipping away as they lose themselves in each other’s skin.
She feels the same pressure building in her gut as before, and she pulls back just enough to speak, “Close,” she breathes out, “I’m so fucking close.”
He nods, one of his hands slipping from her hip to her clit again, drawing a gasp from her as he runs his thumb back and forth over it, smooth skin, that would have once been calloused from holding a gun, firm against hers.
She falls over the edge, and he falls with her, her name grunted against her lips as his grip on her thigh tightens just enough she knows she’ll have a bruise in the morning. A tattoo of pleasure against her skin that she knows he’ll be here to soothe, his lips against the marks he’d left behind as he offered soft apologies she didn’t want or need.
All she wanted was him, and she knew the feeling was mutual.
She kisses him despite them both still being breathless, and she holds him close, not wanting him to pull away, not wanting this to end.
She chuckles breathlessly when she finally breaks the kiss, and rests her forehead against his, their skin sticking together with sweat. “Okay,” she breathes out, “Maybe I could get on board with Pilates.”
ok but favorite scully-gazing-at-mulder moment? she's a yearner too
incredible (and impossible) question thank you (and incredible url)
okay so one of my favorite scenes ever is the end scene of Deadalive when she smiles for the first time in 58392992 years and that's what immediately came to mind
but just to go with the "huh, was not expecting that" theme, I'm also gonna do this revival one because I could die from the love in those eyes oh my GOD (also the way she looks at him and then looks down when she grabs his hand in the last scene of Babylon???!??!!!)
It’s funny how Katniss seems perplexed whenever Peeta says anything rebellious or does something she doesn’t expect. Almost like she can’t believe he’s not just a pretty face.
dededos
prguitarman
romaincrisis
ellievsbear
vaporwave
