A/N: I dont own Criminal Minds, of course. If I did things would turn so sudsy you would hate me! But thanks to fanfiction I can play with them a bit. Spoilers for Nameless, Faceless, and episode 100 so be warned. This is how I always imagined that the team would find out about Hotch and Emily's non existent relationship. These two are my second fav imaginary couple on the show. (Come on writer's Hotch needs a break!)
Enjoy. And don't forget to review.
You know they really had done a good job of hiding it. They had been casually seeing each other after Foyet attacked him. It was nothing scandalous, just dropping by checking in on him, bringing him take-out on occasion. Just slightly above the call of duty, but she was concerned, everyone was. Sure, the others tried to do the same for a while, but she was the most consistent about it. She never let his stoic mood turn her away. But later after Haley's murder and Foyet's death she became unsure how to approach him, but once she got over the awkwardness she went on as she did before, continuing to be the friend he could lean on. However somewhere in between being friendly and being a confidant things changed, and it was no going back, and neither of them wanted to despite what this romance could do to both their careers. So they made a valiant effort to hide it, but no matter how hard you try, sometimes things just start to slip. The longer they went on with the relationship the harder it was to keep things under wraps. Feelings became more and more intense, stronger. It was like trying to hide a fire in the dark, growing more and more impossible.
It was just little things, a touch here, a secret glance there, but when you work around some of the best profilers in the world it doesn't take much to create a blip on their radar. Take for instance the time in the briefing when she accidently called him "Aaron". I mean thats harmless in normal situations but that's major in the team dynamic. No one calls each other by their first names. Well that's not entirely true. Every now and then you may hear a "Penelope" , or "Derek", or when JJ was there a "Spence", but no one under Hotch ever called him "Aaron". So you can imagine the red flag that went off in those profiler's heads. The smirks on Rossi's and Morgan's faces, the wide-eyed look on Reid's face, and even though Garcia was not a profiler she was very intuitive when it came to matters of the heart. She was practically beaming when Prentiss made the slip. Hotch just tried to look as nonchalant as possible, while Prentiss looked like she literally had the proverbial foot in her mouth.
They dispersed and went on working as though nothing ever happened, but everyone had a happy little gleam in their eyes. Hotch had been suffering for so long, it was about time something good came into his life. And if it happened to be the lovely Emily Prentiss, then so be it.
The End