Author's note: As always, I don't own Criminal Minds. I hope you like this chapter - I wrote most of this one before I wrote the rest of it, so I feel like I've been kind of heading toward this point...


All the way back to Hotch's, they continued to chat as easily as they had been in the bar. But when they got to his door, the realisation hit them both at the same time. The conversation they'd both been trying to keep on hold was about to happen. Emily started picking at her nails.

"Okay," she said as they sat down on Hotch's sofa with two more beers. "I really, really didn't mean to say anything yet -"

"Neither did I -"

"But it's getting pretty damn hard to ignore." She smiled and angled her body toward him shyly. "I don't… Want…" She dropped her head then looked up at him through her eyelashes. "I don't want this to… Damn, when did I get so inarticulate?"

Hotch laughed, reaching out to take her hand. It was scary how open he felt with her, even with his growing panic about this conversation, and all of the ways it could go terribly wrong. "Emily," he said softly. She looked up properly and smiled, her eyes meeting his and softening. "I realised as soon as you were gone that I was an idiot not to have said it before." He shook his head, trying to gather his thoughts. He didn't want to use the word love, not yet. "I like this a lot," he said, gesturing at their hands on the sofa. "I like you a lot. I don't know if this is completely insane, or if you feel the same way, or if -"

He stopped in his tracks when he felt Emily's hand at the back of his neck, felt their bodies draw together. His eyes closed as she approached, his hands wandered up her back, and their lips met slowly, softly. She felt soft and warm and beautiful. He pulled her closer, on top of him, shifted them so they were lying down on the sofa together, and the kiss deepened, her lips parting his a little as her hand crept into his hair. His breath caught and he felt her smile. She pulled back and his eyes fluttered open.

Emily tilted her head, lost in looking into his eyes. This openness was something she had only glimpsed before, no matter how hard she tried to encourage it, and to see him gazing at her like this with such tenderness… She wanted to drink in every moment, savour it so she would never forget. "I like this a lot too," she breathed. "I want to try this. I know it's risky and I know… Work… And… But…" She shook her head and dropped her face to his again, the intensity of the moment overwhelming her so she couldn't help but let out a soft moan as they kissed.

Aaron sat up, pulling her with him so that she sat on his lap, straddling him. Her hand caressed his neck and then crept down to remove his tie. He was gripped by hugely conflicting emotions. On the one hand, Emily Prentiss was removing his clothes and there was nothing he wanted more than to touch her, for her to touch him, and he was already blushing at the thought of where this was leading. On the other hand, Emily Prentiss was removing his clothes and there was nothing he wanted less than for her to recoil at the sight of the scars Foyet had left. She had undone two buttons, nuzzling and kissing his neck, when he grabbed her hand and pulled back. "Emily," he said quietly.

"Sorry." Immediately, she dropped her hands to her sides. "We don't have to, if you don't want -"

He shook his head. "Not that. It's not that. I do... I do want this Emily, a lot."

She shivered at the intensity in his voice and met his gaze. "Okay..." she said, urging him to go on.

Absently, he brushed his hand over his abdomen as he said, "I just... I don't want you to be surprised when you see them." He dropped his eyes, looking at her knee pressing into his hip. "There are a lot of scars, and they're..." Horrifying, he thought. Humiliating. He shook his head.

Emily's stomach twisted at the embarrassment on his face. She gathered herself, smiled, hooked a finger under his chin and lifted his head up so he was looking straight back at her eyes again. "Hotch," she said, then immediately chastised herself. "Aaron." His eyes widened momentarily when she said his name, and she felt a little jolt in his muscles. A shadow of a smile appeared on his face and she wanted nothing more than to grab him and kiss him. But first. "I was dead for seven months," she said slowly, deliberately, willing him to take it in, "because I was stabbed straight through the abdomen with a wooden stake." She raised her eyebrows at him. "You think I look the way I did before?"

He blinked. She would be beautiful. He didn't care about her scars, he just wanted to touch every inch of her skin, to kiss her everywhere, to hold her close and share with her this heat rising inside him... A lump formed in his throat and he did his best to put on his work-face, his mask. He didn't want her to see this. His scars were different, or at least felt different. He looked at them in the morning and he felt humiliated and disgusted. He knew that was what Foyet wanted so he tried to force it to the back of his mind, but it was there, and the thought of her seeing them... So many scars... Like Foyet's... If she was at all disgusted at the sight he would see it in her face no matter how hard she tried to mask it and he couldn't bear that.

Emily watched closely for any emotion betrayed on his face. Eventually she caught it. Something beyond apprehension. Fear. Not of her scars, she saw when she mentioned them that he wouldn't care about that. She shook her head and smiled ruefully. "I can see what I'm going to have to do," she said, sighing theatrically.

She leaned forward and kissed him again, waiting until she felt his body relax, until his hands started to stoke her back and pull her toward him, until he breathed a sigh of pleasure into her mouth, and then she sat back and his eyes followed her hungrily. Slowly, keeping eye contact the entire time, she lifted her own shirt over her head. Swallowing hard, she dropped it to the floor, took his hand and placed it over the knotted mess of a scar on her abdomen. Her own hand rose to the scar on her breast, where the brand had been, and then dropped again.

Aaron held her gaze, felt an overwhelming rush of affection and love and sadness as he brushed his thumb over the raised skin and he couldn't stop the tears forming in his eyes as he thought, Emily I am so sorry, we should have got there sooner. Emily held his hand on her scar and with one hand and with the other, reached out to brush her thumb over his cheekbone. "You can look," she said. "And I'll make a deal. If I become disgusting and ugly and somehow less of a person when you see this, then we can assume I'll feel the same about you and we'll call it a day and both go to hell, okay?" A laugh caused a couple of his tears to spill over, and she wiped them away before moving their hands away. "Look," she said softly.

His eyes dropped from her face to her stomach, and he saw the area where her soft, pale skin was knotted and pulled together. It had healed remarkably well for what he knew must have been a horrific, messy wound leaving not a lot of clean, untorn flesh to work with. The scar was sizable, and it was messy, and it stood out against the beautiful landscape of her body, but it was not ugly. It could never be ugly. As his eyes drifted back up, lingering longer on the soft, miraculous curves of her body than on her scar, he cupped his hand behind her neck and kissed her, softly but firmly, trying to convey everything he felt for her. He felt her hands at his chest again, lingering for permission before undoing his buttons. He nodded and pulled her closer to him.

Emily got to the last button as he started kissing her neck and shoulders and the heat rose in her body, almost all-consuming, almost no going back. She broke away, breathing hard, fire in her eyes, and opened his shirt, pushing it down his shoulders. Obediently he worked his arms out of it, dropped his hands to her thighs and just stared at her, nervously awaiting her reaction. Emily traced a finger from his collarbone down his sternum and felt a smile on her lips. She knew he was fit, she knew how strong and muscular he felt when he held her, but my god he looked good. She couldn't believe she was really sitting here in her bra on top of a shirtless Aaron Hotchner. And he was too busy awaiting judgement on his scars to realise how completely beautiful she found him. There were a lot of scars. And a lump rose in her throat when she thought about what they represented. They were more than just marks on skin. But how could he think...? She shook her head and flattened her palm on his chest, over his heart. "Aaron," she said softly. His expression didn't change - he maintained studying, searching eye contact, waiting to analyse her next words for signs that she knew what these scars meant and they disgusted her as much as they disgusted him. He was thoroughly unprepared for what came out of her mouth. "I love you."


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