"Hotch, it'll be fun." She throws out from the couch across his office.
"I think you've forgotten the definition of that word." Her best friend and boss says from where he's seated at his desk munching on a sandwich from their favorite cafe.
"Ok, maybe fun is the wrong word, but it will be a good challenge." Emily tries to convince him to join her again before placing a chip into her mouth.
"Why don't you ask Morgan to join you? He'd probably enjoy it."
"He'd probably laugh at my struggle." Emily pauses before adding, "He probably wouldn't break a sweat during it. I need someone to suffer with me."
"Suffer? I thought this was supposed to be fun."
"We can turn it into a challenge." Emily hopes that Aaron won't turn down a chance to win.
"I already trained for a triathlon this year. Do I really need more of a challenge?"
"I meant more like a bet." This piques Aaron's interest.
"What would the bet be?" Aaron's mind fills with a few options he would love, but he can't imagine Emily ever going for.
"You can pick. I'm doing this so I can lose a bit of weight before my beach vacation in three months. But how about you come over after work with an idea for the bet and we can take the before pictures and do the first work out?" And Aaron can't believe the words that come out of his mouth.
"Fine."
When Aaron shows up at Emily's door, he'd dreading all of it. It's insanity, all of it. First of all they're doing the actual work out, Insanity, which he's not even sure his body will survive through, but he's also not sure she will agree to his bet. He looked up the results that people tend to get online and they look amazing. Hell, he'd look like Morgan if those results are typical. Maybe Emily pushing him to work out with her is her cluing him in on what she wants too… no that can't be it. He hesitates as he thinks it over, but forces himself to lift his fist to knock on her door. A few moments later, the door swings open and his best friend stands in front of him in a tank top that reads 'Abs Are Great But Have You Tried Donuts?', shorts and a pair of sneakers.
"Hey Hotch. Come on in. You're not allergic to cats right?" He shakes his head as he walks in her front door. "Good, good. I should have asked before I invited you over. Sergio doesn't like being shut off in different rooms. The whole house is his kingdom, you know?" A black cat walks out of the hallway and takes in the visitor that has entered into his house. "I swear once he warms up to you, he's a love bug." She turns to her cat and scoops him up. "Aren't you Serge?" Aaron makes his way over to try and introduce himself to the black ball of fur in Emily's arms.
"Hi Sergio." The king of the castle sniffs at the hand, but allows him to give pets. The bringer of food seems to think this man is ok, so he'll allow him to be here… for now anyway. Speaking of food, he should check to see if his bowl is full. He twists and turns until Emily puts him down. "So did you figure out what the bet is?"
"So we have to take pictures?" Their voices fill the room at the same time.
"Sorry, you go first." Emily's hand motions for him to go ahead.
"No, no, ladies first." Aaron's hands rise up to fence his words.
"Ok. I was just wondering if you figured out what the bet would be."
"I… uh, came up with something. But feel free to say no."
"Ok…?" Emily is apprehensive, if only at how Aaron is phrasing it.
"If we make it through the 60 days-"
"67 days." Emily corrects.
"Ok, 67 days." Aaron amends his statement. "If we make it through Insanity, I get to take you out on a date. If we quit then no harm, no foul."
"A date…?" The apprehension comes through her voice clearly.
"As friends, as more, it doesn't really matter. But I will take it this plan has an insane eating plan so it will be a reward essentially."
"If we fail do I have to take you out then?" Emily asks. A date with Emily either way? There's definitely an easy answer to this question.
"Sure. If that's how you want to make this bet."
"Fine, you have a deal." Emily sticks her hand out towards her. He takes her soft, yet gun calloused hand in his and shakes it.
"So we do it appears." Aaron holds her hand a few seconds longer than he needs to before releasing her. "Now pictures?"
"Right!" Emily clears her throat as though the words had got caught on the way out.
"It's for the before and afters right?"
"Mmhmm. I'm no unsub. I'm not trying to get a weird photo of you in workout gear to hold on to." Emily says with a laugh.
"Never said you were Em." The nickname slips out before he can stop it. He had never said it to her face, only in his head and it catches her off guard.
"I'll, uh, grab my phone." She turns to walk into most likely her bedroom and it gives Aaron a few moments to look around her living room. There's a book on her coffee table- Tell Me How Long The Train's Been Gone by James Baldwin- with a bookmark haphazardly stuck inside as if she shoved it inside when he knocked on the door. There's photos in frames and little trinkets on the shelves of her bookshelf that he wants to know all the stories behind. "Got it. I also grabbed my laptop. I don't think we'll need any weights but if we do we can grab them."
"From where?" Aaron asks, in all honesty not knowing.
"My spare bedroom. It's an office slash workout equipment storage." Emily explains.
"Oh, ok. Do we have to do anything special for these photos?" Aaron asks as he thinks back to how most of the men were shirtless. He thinks of all his scars and hopes that's not the case.
"Um, let's see." Emily pulls up Google and types in a few key words. The first few pages look like a bust before she finds a sight that looks like it might actually work for them. The first few paragraphs don't tell her much of what she needs to know, but scrolling past them, she finds the actual information. "Ok so it says basically to wear a swimsuit or form fitting gym clothes." Does she really want to wear a swimsuit in front of her boss? Yes he's her best friend too, but there has to be a line somewhere, right? "We're both already in gym clothes so that's probably fine. And it goes on to say you should show as much of your body as you're comfortable with but keeping it appropriate for the public." Emily thinks about how all the people she saw in the photos had pretty natural looking bodies. None of them had weird looking scars like she does on her stomach, so the shirt should stay on right? "Lastly, it says we need a front facing picture and side views as well. Oh and if we want to be entered to win prizes our faces have to be included."
"I don't know if I need to win a prize." Emily could almost hear the real reason that he wasn't going to put his face in the picture; it was the same reason she was thinking about it- their job and the people they put behind bars.
"Well then the pictures can just be for us. We don't have to show anyone else. Or if anything, we could use them to get out of the physical fitness test this year." Emily teases.
"I think if we can finish Insanity, we can finish the fitness evaluation." Her boss steps into the room, not letting her get out of the test that they're all required to take in order to stay in the field.
"Fine, fine, whatever. So the pictures will be for us to see our progress. You want to take first or go first?" Emily asks.
"I'll take first." Aaron still hadn't decided what to do about his shirt and he knew Emily also had scars, so being he was being selfish by making her go first, but so be it.
"Ok. How about we take it against this wall? It's pretty neutral?" Emily points to the wall opposite of them.
"Fine by me." She hands her phone to Aaron, takes a deep breath and then lifts her shirt off. Emily Prentiss is shirtless in front of him! He can barely believe it! The scar across her midriff is shocking to see, even though he knew it was there, but the sight of taking in more of her flesh than he normally was allowed to look at overpowered it. Focus Hotchner! The picture! She's not here for you to ogle! He holds the camera up and counts, "One, two, three." She turns to the side and he repeats his actions.
"Your turn," Emily says as she picks up her shirt from the floor. Aaron feels like since Emily showed him her scars, he can trust her with his. His isn't one big scar, like hers, but lots of little ones. But this isn't a new girlfriend who doesn't understand what this job comes with, this is SSA Emily Prentiss, the one who found his apartment when Foyet came after him. She knows the story behind his scars. So he breathes in and takes his shirt off on the exhale. The little white marks all over Aaron's chest remind Emily of walking into that apartment, so she tries to push the thoughts from her head. "One, two, three." She counts before snapping the photo. He turns and just for fun she decides to count in another language. "Un, deux, trio." Aaron rolls his eyes, but says nothing as he picks up his shirt from the floor.
"So what killer workout are we looking forward to today?"
"Today is just the fitness test." Emily explains as she pulls a PDF file up on her computer. "But I figure after it we can go over the eating plan because you were right there is an eating plan with it."
"Ok, well let's start with the fitness test. What goes into it?"
"Eight moves, one minute each, as many reps as you can do in a minute." Emily says, showing him the PDF.
"Switch Kick, Power Jacks, Power Knees, Power Jumps, Globe Jumps, Suicide Jumps, Push Up Jacks, Low Plank Obliques." Aaron looks at each move and how it's supposed to be done. "That doesn't look too bad. So should we do like each move alternating?" Emily looks at him with the confusion painted across her face. "Like I can do a move and then you do the move?" Emily can't stop the giggle that escapes her lips. "What?"
"Insanity doesn't allow breaks in the fitness test. You just do all eight back to back. So do you want to go first?" Aaron should have seen it coming, but he'll just have to suck it up.
"If I die, you have to take Jack." Aaron says as he looks over the moves once more.
"It's eight minutes. I don't think it will kill you." Emily says as she pulls up the stopwatch app on her phone.
"It might…" Aaron grumbles.
"If it does, I'll take care of Jack. Want to stretch before attacking these?"
"Probably a good idea." Emily and Aaron both stretch out their bodies before they both look at each other, dreading the actual start of it. Emily glances at the BeachBody page before they get started.
"Oh wait, there's an actual video for the Fitness Test, should we watch it?"
"How long is it?"
"Half an hour."
"How do they make eight minutes into half an hour?" Aaron demands.
"I'm guessing they stretch you out and show you how to do the exercises."
"I guess we can watch it," Aaron's voice returns back to the grumble.
"You can always back out Hotch. I can do this on my own."
"No, we already made our bet. It can't be that much worse than training for the triathlon."
It was so much worse than the triathlon training.
Emily was right, there was a warm up, but it was nothing like the light stretching that they had just done. It was a bunch of intense moves, back to back to back. It is followed by some stretching, but again, nothing like what they had done. Emily pulls out the notepad on her phone. "I'll write our numbers down here," she says in the first short rest. "We can transfer them onto the other page once we print it."
"Three, two, one and go!" The instructor that looks a little too much like Morgan for Aaron's taste calls out and the screen flips between the two people actually doing the work outs and his motivational coaching. The workout continues as Emily and Aaron go between different exercises with the video. After each minute, Aaron calls his number out to Emily who jots it down. By the end of the workouts, Aaron feels ready to die for real, but also ready to see who did better on the workouts, him or Emily, his competitive nature coming out.
"Inhale up, exhale down, let's start to cool those muscles down." Both Emily and Aaron are dripping with sweat as they cool down with the video. That workout, sorry fitness test had killed them both. They could both feel their aching bones but the stretches felt so good. Aaron flexes his hamstrings along with the instructor and feels the pull that he hasn't felt since he was training for the triathlon. They do a couple more stretches before the time on the video runs to a close. And as soon as it's done, Aaron falls to the ground.
"That was awful."
"That was only day one." Emily comments, holding back the laugh she wants to release at Aaron's comment, only because she is betting it will hurt her abs.
"Who did better?" He asks as he lays on the ground trying to catch his breath. Emily looks at the numbers.
"Well we tied on switch kicks with 20 reps and on globe jumps with 4. Power jacks I beat you by four and power knees I got 60 on your 41. But then you got 18 power jumps over my 14 as well as 18 suicide jumps over my 17. But push up jacks I managed to beat you 23 to 21. So it all comes down to deciding low plank obliques and… huh. You beat my 21 to 20. So I think we tied."
"Well, it's a good thing our bet doesn't rely on someone beating the other on the fitness test then." Aaron says as he pushes up off the floor.
"You want some water?" Emily asks as she turns towards her kitchen.
"That would be amazing." Aaron follows her into the kitchen, where she reaches into her fridge and pulls out two bottles of water.
"Here." The second one is passed in his direction. "Let me grab my computer and we can look over the eating plan, or I can email it to you if you need to get back to Jack." Aaron glances at his watch, and notes that it's almost dinner time for his son.
"I should probably get home to Jack. It's almost dinner time. But how about I call you if I have any questions?" Emily nods.
"That sounds good to me. Tell Jack I say hi." Emily follows him towards the door, not expecting to hear from him for the rest of the night. But when her phone goes off after dinner, she's almost surprised to see his face on her phone, especially since it can't be a case since Garcia would be calling with that. "Hotch?"
"What the hell is shakeology?" It takes her a second to click what he's talking about.
"Oh, it's the shake brand that the company that sells Insanity makes. It's basically just protein shakes." Emily runs a hand through her hair as she smiles at how easy that question was. "Anything else question wise?"
"Yeah anyway to make this food kid friendly?"
"Why?"
"Because I make Jack and my meals together and there's no way in hell I'm going to get him to eat cottage cheese."
"You might need to make two separate meals for this." A groan comes from the other end of the phone. "You don't have to follow through with the meal plan, but if you want the results, it will definitely help."
"Why did I let you trick me into this?" She can almost see him running a hand over his face like he does when a case is frustrating him.
"You can always give up Hotch, but that just means I'll be buying you dinner. But I don't know what happens if I finish and you don't. We never discussed that as terms of our bet."
"No I'll do it. But you know that five meals a day is going to be ridiculous the next time we leave on a case."
"Guess we'll have to figure it out when it happens." Luckily, she already had some ideas on how to make that work.