"How was your week off?" JJ asked her once they had sat down in JJ's office with their coffees.
"It was good. Helpful. I finally made some decisions." Emily replied, looking determined.
"Are you finally going to tell Hotch how you feel?" JJ was getting excited.
"No, and I don't ever plan to. I've decided to leave the BAU."
"What?"
"Well, not the BAU exactly, just this team, I've applied for the Unit Chief position for the C-team."
"What? No, you can't leave the team! Em, why are you doing this?" JJ could feel the tears trying to escape.
"Honestly, I can't work with Hotch anymore. I know that it's pathetic to be pining after a guy I can never have, so I have to just stop being around him, and maybe then I will stop feeling, well, like this. I love him and I can never tell him. Do you have any idea what it's like, being around him every day and not even being able to reach out and touch him, it hurts JJ. It really hurts."
"I know it does honey." JJ said, hugging Emily.
"I love you all so much, I really do, but it's killing me. I think it's affecting my job too, in the field, when he gets hurt, I can't take it anymore. I'll still be here to see you all every day, just not work with you. I can usually shut everything away so well but this just won't go away, I've tried, I really have."
"I understand. It's okay."
"Thank you, I'm not sure how I'll be able to do this."
"I'm always here for you, but, you are going to tell Pen yourself." JJ chuckled at Emily's genuinely terrified expression.
There was in fact no need for her to tell Pen, she had come running the minute she had seen Emily's name on the job application in the system. Emily hadn't yet mentioned her plan to anyone except JJ, but Pen running in and yelling at her in the middle of the bullpen did that for her, revealing it to the whole team.
"It's only an application, I probably won't even get the job, so please calm down Pen, and please don't hold it up in the system." Emily was very aware of the things Garcia could do with a computer. The rest of the team was staring at her, except for JJ who was already clued in on what was happening.
"I just don't understand why you would want to break up the team, together we are a family and we need you. What has changed that? Is this why you took last week off, has something happened?"
"Garcie, please, it's nothing like that, I love this team, you know that. Anyway, I would literally be on the other side of the room, I will still see you every day, it's not like I'm moving to another state. It is only an application, if I hear anything at all you will be the first person to know about it."
She looked at the other team members; Reid looked like someone just ran over his puppy, Dave seemed to be not majorly affected by the news, rather understanding actually, Hotch didn't appear to feel anything as he was keeping his neutral mask on, revealing nothing, and Derek was sitting there glaring at her.
"You know Derek, it is a promotion opportunity and you can apply too. We all know you are a great leader and deserve your own team."
"I'm alright on this one thanks." He left the bullpen, taking Pen with him back to her office. Dave followed Hotch into his office, neither of them saying anything to her about it apart from Dave giving her a reassuring smile that he wasn't angry with her.
She went over to Reid and sat on his desk. "It's only an application, I'm not going anywhere just yet." She knew that Reid had abandonment issues and didn't want to make him feel like that was what she was doing too, she loved Reid like a younger brother, or even a son.
"I know. If it makes you happy, I'm okay with it Em." He gave her a small smile.
"Thank you, and if you ever get tired of Mr Grumpy Pants up there you can come join my team." The two of them and JJ laughed.
"Well, that could have gone worse I guess. Although I'm guessing Garcia is freezing my accounts as we speak." Emily said to JJ.
"True, can't believe those two kept quiet." JJ said gesturing to Hotch's office where the two older profilers still were.
"I think Dave is okay with it, Hotch, who knows. I doubt he'll care too much, more bothered about having to replace me probably, just more paperwork for him."
"If you get offered the position will you please tell Pen the real reason behind the move? She deserves to know."
"Yeah I will, I feel so bad not telling her, the plots are bad enough now when she just knows that I like Hotch, if she found out that it was so bad that I have to leave the team, they would get far worse and it would not end well for anyone." JJ begrudgingly agreed that that was probably right.
It was about four weeks later, and Emily's job application had been pretty much forgotten by the team. Garcia and Morgan had only taken three days to face up to the fact that Emily hadn't done anything wrong and therefore couldn't stay mad at her, especially if she was only going to be with them a while longer, they didn't want to waste it being mad.
Emily had arrived at the office as usual and opened up her emails, like every day, and there it was on the very top, a job offer. Considering the interview had been over three weeks ago and she had heard nothing since, she had guessed that she had been unsuccessful. Turns out she was wrong, there was the job offer, requesting she start in two weeks if she chooses to accept.
When she had applied for it she had been determined that this was what she wanted, what she needed to get over her feelings for Hotch, but the past four weeks had weakened her resolve to leave. The decision to leave only made her realise how much she loved being here on this team. It was still hard for her to be around Hotch, still being just a subordinate to him, but it was her problem, not the teams and they shouldn't have to suffer for her issues. She just had to suck it up and get on with the job.
Therefore, when the email was open in front of her, she was no longer sure what to do about it. It was quite an offer, to be unit chief in the BAU, she would be equal status of Rossi, Gideon and Hotch and to be good enough for that status was really saying something. They thought she was that good? Wow. Tears came to her eyes as she thought on that. It was quite something to be told that she was good enough to be unit chief.
JJ came over when she saw that something was up with Emily. "Hey, what's wrong?"
"They offered me the unit chief job." Emily said, waving her hand at the computer screen.
"That's great, why are you upset?" JJ was confused as to why this meant that she was crying.
"I'm not upset. They think I am good enough to be a unit chief in the BAU. That's really something."
"Of course you're good enough for it, you completely deserve it. You are one of the top profilers in the country." JJ told her as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
"I can't believe it. They really think I'm good at this job."Emily said in surprise as she burst into full on tears, great way to start the work day she thought.
"Oh, Em." JJ chuckled at her friend, she really was silly sometimes.
Once people had started to look at her strangely Emily managed to stop crying and calm down.
"Now will you tell Garcia the real reason for the job change? She has been going crazy trying to think of ways to stop your application." JJ was sure that some of them were in fact illegal.
"Only if you come with me?"
"Hey Garcie, can we talk for a minute?"
"I know. I know they offered you the job." Of course she knew, she knows everything.
"Yeah, and that's what I'm here to talk to you about. I want to explain why I applied for it." Only then did she turn her chair around to face them. Emily had an Austin Powers flashback.
"Tell me now, before I put your lovely apartment on the market." She wasn't joking, Emily and JJ could quite clearly see the image of Emily's apartment on the site of a real estate agency. The two of them sat down, showing that they weren't leaving any time soon.
"Pen, I don't want to the leave the team, never, but I feel like I have to."
"Why? What has happened? If it's Morgan I'll go kick his ass right now." Garcia went from being suspicious to concerned in a second.
"I fell in love with Hotch, and he will never see me as more than a subordinate and friend and every day it kills me that he's right there and I can't do anything. I have to get away from him so that I can do my job, so that maybe eventually I'll be able to get over these feelings for him and start dating again." Emily explained, hoping that Garcia would understand.
"I knew you'd never just leave us like that." Garcia said passionately before throwing her arms around Emily who was thrown off balance and had to lean on JJ to stay upright.
"Of course I wouldn't. Even though they offered me the job, I don't know if I'll accept; I love this team too much, and if I've gone this long working with Hotch surely I can just keep doing it, it's my problem and no one else's, I just have to deal with it. I don't know, I need to think about it still."
What the three women didn't know was that Hotch had come looking for Garcia and had just caught Emily's last utterance from outside the doorway. Instead of knocking, he turned around and left again, he'd come back later he decided. He couldn't believe that she hated working with him so much that she'd leave the team entirely. If she had a problem with him, why didn't she say something? He thought they were friends, for the last few months he'd even been trying to get up the courage to ask her out and tell her how he truly felt about her, that he wanted to be more than friends with her, that he wanted her for the rest of his life. How had he got it so wrong? He was a profiler after all. But she was a politician's daughter, taught to hide her feelings to the very last. He went and shut himself away in his office.
Emily was at her desk contemplating the job offer, they wanted and answer soon, but she was still undecided. Could she really leave all of this? She looked at the team around her; Morgan was flexing his muscles at his webcam that she had no doubt had Garcia on the other end, Reid was reading several case files at a time, all spread across his desk, while spinning a pencil in his left hand, she could see JJ in her office on the phone, she was smiling and laughing so Emily guessed that either Will or Henry was on the other end. Dave was standing on the catwalk, leaning against the hand rail trying to chat up one of the female BAU interns by telling her tales of old cases he had solved, apparently single-handedly, and Hotch, well as usual he was in his office with his door and blinds shut but she knew he was there because his light was on, and if she was honest, was he ever anywhere else? Yeah, she loved this team, her family, more than words could ever express.
Her whole decision was dependent upon one person; Aaron Hotchner, and he didn't even know it.
She decided that she would let him decide for her.
Emily walked up to his office and entered, taking a seat in front of his desk. Neither of them said anything, Emily looked nervous and Hotch looked sad.
"They offered me the unit chief job."
"Congratulations." He sounded anything but happy about it.
"I don't know if I'll accept."
"You should." He said quickly, which surprised her. Did he want her to leave?
"Oh."
"Oh?"
"I had thought you would tell me not to."
"I wouldn't try to stop you taking a promotion you deserve, I don't hate you, I wouldn't try to make you stay somewhere you weren't happy."
"I am happy here, on your team."
"I'm sorry."
"For what?" She looked at him confused, he wasn't making any sense, why was he apologising?
"That I make you want to leave a team you're happy in." She was looking at him like he was insane. "I may have overheard you telling Garcia that I am the reason you have to leave the team, and I'm sorry, if I had known that I was doing something wrong I would have stopped."
"Um, that's not exactly what I meant." She looked down, away from him.
"Then what did you mean because I am trying to think of the thing that made you hate me so much that you can't stand to be around me anymore and I am coming up with nothing."Hotch was getting frustrated and it was showing.
"I fell in love with you." Emily blurted out, she had never intended to tell him but he needed to understand, because otherwise she knew he would spend the next month going over every interaction, every case, trying to find the stressor which made her leave.
"Oh." His eyes went wide with shock.
"Yeah, so that's why I have to leave." She had embarrassed herself enough that she would definitely be taking the promotion now.
"Why does that mean you have to leave?"
"Are you serious? I'm in love with you, my supervisor, and I have to work with you every single day, and it physically hurts because all I want to do is touch you and kiss you and I have no right to do that. It's affecting my job, I can't focus in the field because the whole time I'm worrying that you'll get hurt again. And now I have told you all this and you'll go through the whole 'sorry, you're great but I don't feel the same' speech and then it will be awkward, so it's best if I leave before I mess up even more. I start in two weeks." She was proud of herself for not crying again.
"No. You aren't going anywhere."
"I have to."She stood up to leave his office, coming in here had been a bad idea.
"No, you don't Emily." He reached out for her hand and held it in his. "I don't want you to leave. I don't want you anywhere other than right next to me for the rest of your life. Em, I'm in love with you too, I feel what you feel. I should have said something months ago but I was too damn scared. Please stay with me." She could see in his eyes that he meant every word, and that made her fall even more in love with him, if that were even possible.
Emily was stunned, in fact she was pretty sure that she had fallen asleep at her desk and this was a dream. He was telling her he felt the same way, was this actually happening? He was all she would ever want, if he wanted her too who was she to refuse him.
Emily grabbed the lapels of his suit jacket and pulled him to her so she was able to kiss him furiously. Hotch responded and wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her even further into his chest.
JJ walked into the bullpen to hand out some files, looking up at Hotch's office she saw him and Emily clearly enjoying themselves with some mouth on mouth action, they had obviously forgotten that the blinds were open so they were on very public display, yet no one seemed to have noticed. JJ smiled at the sight, she had been waiting years for this exact moment.
"It appears that Emily won't be taking that unit chief job after all." JJ said to Morgan and Reid, nodding her head towards the office in question.