AN: Because I couldn't leave it where I left it...
Prompt: Write the most tooth-rotting sweet fluff you can for your favourite pairing, because some of you abuse those poor couples way too much. Give 'em a break already.
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Despite the fact that he's very good at his job, Reid misses things.
Things like this.
He's out with Morgan on one of the man's endless hopeful quests to find Reid a girlfriend—or maybe just a hug—when they spot a familiar silhouette standing by a taxicab rank in the pouring rain. Reid pauses. He's a little drunk and very silly right now, Morgan hanging heavily on his arm, but he knows Emily. He'd know her anywhere.
"Prentiss!" yelled Morgan, confirming Reid's drunken suspicion. His second suspicion is confirmed two seconds later when she turns to look, and the man beside her turns with her. Reid stares. The man's face is astoundingly familiar. It's a face that Reid sees every morning when he shaves in front of his mirror.
"Oh, hi… hi, guys," Emily says. With her skin pale from the cold, Reid very clearly sees her blush. "We, ah, did not dress for the weather."
She's not looking at Reid or the man beside her as he introduces himself politely. Reid doesn't look at him either; just at her. And he does what he's supposed to be good at: he profiles.
Before they leave, he strips his coat and hands it to her, close enough that he's sheltering her from the rain.
"I can't take your coat." She smells like alcohol. He's dizzy with it.
"You should have told me," he replies, pushing the coat into her arms. "I thought it was just me."
And he walks away, knowing that Emily won't thank him for leading her to the solution to the miserable flush to her cheeks or the way she angles herself away from her date ever so unconsciously. She has to come to him.
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He opens his front door with hands covered in sugar to find her standing there with frizzy hair. She's wearing his coat still. They do nothing but stare at each other for a moment, until he steps aside and lets her in, seeing her eyes rove over the bedding on his couch and his bathrobe and the bowls set on the kitchen table, the scent of popcorn in the air.
"You're making caramel popcorn," she says, looking at him. Really looking at him, and he wonders how he'd ever missed this. Some profiler. "I love caramel popcorn."
"There's enough for two," he offers and, when she smiles, closes the door.
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When he kisses her, they're sober. He's washed his hands of the sugar, but it doesn't matter; their lips are sticky anyway. She tastes of scotch and caramel and it's a dizzying moment of connection.
They break apart. They breathe.
She slides her arms around him and pulls him close. Like a cat, she's perched on the table in range of the mixing bowls; this means that when he steps into her arms, he's between her legs and fully encompassed in her hug. Mouth resting on her hair and his hands sliding nervously around her flannel-clad sides, his heart and stomach both flip a little at the knowledge she's in a pair of his pyjamas. Far too big for her, the legs rolled up three times and the sleeves rolled too, and she hadn't even teased him about the dinosaur patterns on the shirt.
"You should have told me," he says again, into that dark, damp hair.
"I was scared," she replies.
"Of what?"
And her arms tighten around him, her face against his chest. He can feel her mouth shifting when she goes to speak and falters.
He answers for her: "Stay tonight?"
Dark eyes flicker up, her mouth the cocky smile he's loved for longer than he cares to admit—probably longer than she's looked at him like that, that's for sure. "Do I have a choice?" she says, and points back down to the dinosaur pjs. She does. He'd drive her anywhere she wanted. He'd give her the world if she asked.
Maybe she can see that in his eyes. Maybe she's a better profiler than he is. He knows he loves her in that moment and she knows it too.
She still tastes like popcorn. He's still unsure this isn't a dream.
She stays the night.
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He wakes in the morning on his couch, a comforter around them and her curled behind him, her face pressed between his shoulder-blades. It's not comfortable—his shoulder is numb and he's pretty sure his back is going to try to make him regret the entire thing—but he still doesn't move. She's warm and asleep and he's stunned that this is his life.
"I told Simon it's not working between us," Emily mumbles into his shoulder, snuggling closer. "Is that presumptive? It feels presumptive."
Reid rolls over with difficulty, folding further into her and being secretly gleeful that this tips him closer yet. They're cuddled from their legs to their arms, breathing together in some kind of timeless unison, and he's never felt quite so safe before.
"Did you like him?" he asks, needing to know, not wanting.
"I liked pretending I did," she answers after a pause. "I liked… how easy it was."
There's a conversation here they need to have and it's full of thorns and knots and tough decisions, because nothing they're starting will be easy, or smart, but neither is it something Reid is willing to throw out without a chance. He just nods, bringing his fingers to her cheek to tug a strand of hair from her mouth, and says, "Well, I know what else is easy."
"What?"
He kisses her as he says it, soft and kind and a little bit husky, and he's never seen a woman go from sleepy and worried to aroused so quickly.
"Popcorn for breakfast," he whispers throatily into her ear.
She laughs, rolling him from the couch with a quick shove and a yelp from him as he hits the ground. "Oh jeez," she teases, rolling on top of him and purring the words. "You had me at 'easy'."