A/N: Thanks again for the reviews. They're insanely entertaining! It was really interesting to hear the mixed reviews on who was the good/bad guy in the last chapter. Hmmm. Enjoy this one! 'Tis a bit lighter.

"Are you sure you're okay with this?" Emily asked Garcia once Jack, Henry, and Charlotte were inside Garcia's eclectically decorated apartment with her.

"Oh my goodness, yes. I'm beyond thrilled! I put all my candles and any breakable objects away. Are you sure you only need me to take them for the day? I can keep them overnight."

"No, we just need our hands free for the day to paint the nursery."

"And…?" Garcia asked, sitting Henry at the coffee table with some crayons and a coloring book she'd bought as soon as Emily had called.

"And talk," Emily said, feeling stupid for trying to slip one past Garcia.

"I wanna stay with you," Jack whined to Emily, hugging her leg and burying his face in it. Garcia watched on curiously at the interaction, smiling at first at how attached to Emily Jack seemed to be.

Emily crouched down and stroked Jack's hair. "I'm sorry, sweetie. But if you stay here at Auntie Penelope's for just the day, then we'll be able to paint faster, okay? We'll be done before you know it." She smiled and kissed him on the forehead. "And…I hear you're getting something special for dinner."

"Can't you stay here and Daddy can paint?"

"He needs my help, honey."

"Are you gonna kiss again?"

Emily's eyes widened in fright. She dared not look at Garcia, but she knew Garcia was probably staring at her upon this little question. "I thought we weren't going to talk about that, remember?"

"Oops!" Jack grinned and covered his mouth.

"It's okay, let's just try to remember next time, okay? Why don't you go show Henry how to color inside the lines? You're getting so good at that."

"Okay." Jack hugged Emily once around the neck before running over to the coffee table.

"He saw?" Garcia whispered as she crossed the room to Emily, closing a white knit shawl around her shoulders as she crossed her arms.

Emily rolled her eyes. "Of course. And brought it up in front of, uh…J-E-S-S-I-C-A when he and his dad had dinner with her last night."

"Oh my gosh," Garcia gasped. "Was she super P-O'ed?"

"She already hates the idea of this entire thing. I'm sure she wasn't pleased. He kind of underplayed the whole incident at first, but then he spent the rest of the night in a foul mood, so I don't know. I'm guessing she gave him the third degree, and honestly, I don't blame her. It was such a bad idea. I would have brought you-know-who over but I don't think she'd be too pleased to see me."

Garcia poked her bottom lip out. "I'm sorry there's so much drama, sweet pea. Is there anything else I can do besides taking the kids?"

Emily shrugged but shook her head at the same time. "I don't think there is, but thank you. Just for this. We have some stuff to straighten out."

Garcia frowned. "Is he pushing you?"

"No, he's not pushing. But he's being…I don't know, kind of spiteful, I guess? Cranky? Whatever it is, I don't like it, and it needs to stop. This just underscores what an awful idea it was in the first place, for us to consider a relationship. Listen, I'd love to stay and talk, but—"

"Oh, please. Go, go. We can talk more later."

"Well, Aaron's golfing with Dave in the morning. Wanna come over for coffee or something?"

"It's a date. Now go paint."

"Thanks again, Pen. I'll give you a call when we're finishing up."

Garcia snorted. "Finishing up…Sorry," she said, then waved Emily away.

"Really mature," Emily said with a smirk. "Bye."

—

"What's all this?" Hotch asked with a wrinkled brow when he got into the kitchen with paint and supplies and saw Emily dressed in ratty jeans and an equally ratty t-shirt.

"The kids are all at Garcia's for the rest of the day."

"Why?" he asked, his keys jingling onto the counter top.

"So we can paint. I've already moved and covered furniture with some tarps I found in the garage, so it's ready to go. Shouldn't take us long."

"Oh. Umm, thanks. Let me go get changed."

Emily was already taping off trim and covering up the floor when Hotch got to the nursery in his own jeans and t-shirt.

Without a word, he took a screwdriver to the lid of one of the paint cans he'd carried up and pried it open. "This a good color?" he asked after giving it a good stir. Emily walked over to check it out.

"Looks fine from here. Guess we'll know when it dries." Hotch opened up the primer.

Emily allowed for the process to get well underway before trying any sort of communication with Hotch. All the trim was primed and two whole walls as well (and the last two halfway done) before she spoke. "We need to talk," she finally said.

"Again?"

"Yes, again," Emily said as she poured more primer into her tray.

"What about?" Hotch asked from the other side of the room.

"About how we're going to act around each other. You know, we need each other. We can't expect to raise three impressionable children the right way if we're withdrawn and snippy and spiteful." She decided to use "we're" instead of "you're" to soften the blow. Hotch never reacted well to being attacked.

"I'm stressed. I'm sorry."

"When you're stressed, you should talk to me, not run away from me."

"I didn't run away."

"And what was the sudden trip to the paint store? We never even talked about painting the nursery."

"I told you. I need to keep my mind occupied. I don't do well just lying around."

"Then do a damn crossword puzzle. Please stop insulting my intelligence. I get it. You're upset that things didn't work out the way you wanted. Guess what. They didn't work out the way I wanted them to either. But we have to be adults about this. I can't handle the mood swings and the passive aggressiveness. The…taking off to the damn paint store because you can't handle whatever emotions you're feeling."

"I apologize if it felt like I was being passive aggressive. But it's difficult to hear our situation explained in such simple terms. The way you pretend like the decision we made was so easy, like it didn't matter to you—"

"Of course it matters to me," Emily said, putting down her paint roller. Hotch did the same and they faced each other, but still from several feet away.

"Then you've certainly fooled me into thinking it was an easy decision for you."

"If the decision had been easy, then Thursday night never would have went down the way it did. I would have been able to say no before we kissed, and I wouldn't have been so worked up over saying no in the end. Do you seriously think that it was like picking what cereal I wanted for breakfast?"

The fervor with which Emily tore apart Hotch's argument started to make him feel utterly stupid. Of course it hadn't been easy for her. She'd spent seven months without him and he knew, through JJ, that she'd suffered through most of it.

And they had been getting along well before the night they almost kissed after their little conversation out on the porch. They'd been fantastic together. She hadn't been hateful or untrusting like she had the right to be. She cared about him. She wanted this situation to work out in their favor. But most of all, he knew, from the way her brow settled right now, from the way she yelled at him, from the way she'd kissed him—that she was still in love with him.

But therein lay the entire problem. It was this knowledge, deep down inside, the Emily loved him, that kept him from moving on. Maybe if she'd flat-out rejected him, instead of just the idea of a relationship—if she'd made it clear that she no longer felt anything for him, then maybe her casual attitude lately wouldn't be so disheartening. But knowing she wanted the same thing he did made it sting every time she referred to their life-altering choice in a way that made it sound so simple, like when she said things like, "ba-da-bing, ba-da-boom." He wished he could keep it from affecting him as much as it did—wished he could somehow turn on a force field like he'd managed to when working on cases with the BAU, to keep the gruesomeness from turning his dreams to nightmares. He wished he could keep Emily's words from burning his ears, keep himself from overanalyzing every single one of them.

"Aaron, say something," Emily said. Hotch realized he'd been staring at the half-gray, half-beige wall behind Emily while he'd been sorting his thoughts.

"I'm sorry I was reactive," he said shamefully. "I didn't mean to cause more drama. I'm just having a harder time handling this than I thought I would. I think that maybe I misled myself."

"How do you mean?" Emily sat down in the tarp-covered rocking chair, the blue plastic crunching underneath her.

"I'd rather not—" Hotch started to say as he turned around to continue painting, but Emily cut his words off.

"Aaron."

"Fine. I wasn't ready for things to turn out this way. That's all. Maybe I'm just jealous that you're accepting it so readily. I'm not used to things affecting me this way. I want to pretend like this isn't a big deal."

"Turn around for a minute," Emily said gently.

Hotch rolled his eyes before obeying.

Emily waited patiently for Hotch to look her in the eye before speaking. "If it makes you feel any better, that's all I'm doing. Pretending. It's just as big of a deal to me as it is to you. It wasn't easy for me to say no. But I had to draw the line between what I want and what's right, because at this point in my life, unfortunately, they're two very different things. Maybe it's easier for me to pretend that this isn't affecting me because I was closer to JJ. I think that I felt like taking her kids was more of a no-brainer than you did. I was her best friend." Tears came sliding down Emily's cheeks out of nowhere and she hastily wiped them away. "I'm not saying I don't trust your intention to see this through, not at all. I think we just came from different places. And not to harp on it, but I already know how to live without the things I want. It's toughened my skin a little. Or maybe it's just that I'm a better actor. I don't know. But I don't want you to feel like garbage. I'm not trying to be all hoity-toity, look at me, I don't have emotions. I'm just trying to get by."

As much as it helped to know that Emily hadn't been making light of the situation because she truly felt that way, at the same time it just dug the hole a little deeper. She definitely still wanted him. After that little monologue there was no denying it. But now he had to learn to pretend, just like she'd been doing, that the idea of them was a piece of history.

When Hotch didn't say anything, just stared expressionlessly at Emily, she continued. "I don't want to fight with you. I don't want us to have to have these talks every other day. I want things to go smoothly. Like they did the first couple of weeks. Don't you?"

"Of course."

"Then when one of us says something that makes the other feel like shit," Emily said frankly, "the other one just needs to say something. And we need to just…be done with this week. We need to move on. We need to remember our priorities. We're so much better than this. There are parts of this…situation…that are just like the relationship we walked away from. We need to trust each other for one, and I think we're doing all right in that department, but we also need to communicate. Am I right?"

"You're right," Hotch murmured.

Emily couldn't help but grin. "How hard was that?" she asked, getting up to pick up her paint roller again.

"How hard was what?" Hotch asked, turning.

"Saying that I was right."

Hotch chuckled. "It hurt a little," he admitted.

"Just how much?"

Hotch took the lightened energy as permission to turn around and continue working.

"On a scale of one to ten, with one being hard, and ten being the hardest thing you've ever done, how hard was it to say that I was right?" Emily asked as she swooped her roller across the wall again.

"Definitely a fifteen."

"Then taxes will be a breeze. Want to do mine, too?"

"If you really want me to."

Emily laughed. "I think I'm good. I think once the primer's on, we crack open a couple beers and get down to business. Be productive."

"This isn't productive?" Hotch asked.

"Not now," Emily said with the last pass of her roller, and before Hotch could ask her what she meant, she rolled it down the length of his back.

She stepped into the safety of the carpeted hallway, where she knew Hotch wouldn't chase her.

"Was that really necessary?" he rumbled, but in good humor.

"Definitely."

—

"How's it going over there?" Hotch asked from behind his laptop. Emily sat across the dining room table from him behind her own laptop, chin propped up in her hand.

"Ehhh," she said. "I gave up half an hour ago."

"Confused?"

"Mmm, no, just don't really want to know how much I owe Uncle Sam this year."

"You withhold?"

"I told you, I stink at saving. I'm all for instant gratification. I'm not about to give the government an interest-free loan for the year, anyway. That's all that happens when you don't withhold, you know."

"But it also means I'll be getting a nice big check in a few weeks and you'll be digging through the couch cushions to pay what you owe," Hotch said with an exaggerated tone of superiority.

"Hey, I….don't really have a good counterargument."

"Then you best not open your mouth," Hotch mumbled.

"Says the one who said 'All pinks are pretty much the same.'"

"You know I'm a man. We only see about seven colors, and that's on a good day."

"Worst story ever made up by anyone. You have more ties than I think a department store carries at one time. Seriously, who started saying that men don't see as many colors as women? Probably a guy who didn't want to pick paint colors."

"The vast majority of my ties are either red or blue. And if I remember correctly, I very willingly went to pick out paint colors."

"Because you wanted to piss me off and walk away," Emily said with a grin that Hotch couldn't see, but she know he could somehow hear. She wasn't trying to be bitter, and luckily he didn't take it that way.

"True. Want another beer?" he asked, getting up and grabbing their empties.

"One more. Then it's time for another coat. Hey, you know you have paint on your back, right?"

"You know I'm going to shake your beer, right?"

Emily smiled and turned around in her chair. "Hey, hang on."

"What?" Hotch asked, turning around. "Are you seriously shopping for cars right now?" he asked when he saw what she had pulled up on her computer screen.

"Of course, but that's not what I wanted."

"What is it, then?" Hotch asked, leaning against the door frame.

"I just wanted to say that I'm sorry," Emily said, biting her lip.

"For painting me?"

"Well, technically I didn't paint you. I primed you so I can paint you later, but that's not what I'm talking about. What I mean is—"

"Don't worry about it," Hotch said seriously. "I feel dumb for being a drama queen about it. That's not like me. I'm sorry."

"I don't think either one of us are acting like ourselves lately, are we?"

Hotch shrugged. "Everything around us has changed. Maybe we're changing too."

A/N: Please leave a review...you know you want to! :)