The Eighth Year
She can't stay overseas the next year.
She puts the wheels in motion six months prior, asking the right questions, pulling in the right favours. Her things are already en route to a beautiful condo in Alexandra and she's deplaning in Dulles with her heart in her throat.
In hindsight, she shouldn't have worried. Hotch and Jack greet her at the airport, the latter with an excited hug and endless chatter, the former with a much warmer hug and hot eyes. She'd planned to spill it all, of course, talk it through with them when she's settled and maybe doesn't feel so much like gross plane, but his face, his presence, derails her completely. Instead of telling him anything, she gets her hands on his ears and pulls him down to her mouth. It takes him a moment, his hands digging reflexively into her hips, before he leans into her.
She sits on her other news in the following days. It's not out of malice or nerves or anything. She's just distracted. There's the team of course, and traditions, Jack and the easy way she and Hotch just seem to fall back into being together after their year of long-distance friendship. It just doesn't feel like there's ever a good time to say anything.
But then it is. They're pleasantly full from Christmas dinner - a pleasantly chaotic thing where everyone's pitched in, mashing and mixing and chopping and, of course, eating - and the living room flickers with tea lights in the aftermath of the tradition. It's Derek that brings it up, sprawled beside Garcia, who keep shoving him affectionately when he gets too heavy.
"When's your flight out?" he asks, a bittersweetness to his face.
She chews her lip for a moment, carefully slips out of the Hotchner dog pile she's been coerced into. Not that she minds. "Actually. Never."
She feels Hotch's hand curl at her hip, the surprised jolt of Jack at her side. "What?"
She goes back to chewing her lip, a nervous tell. "I'm transferring to the Pentagon in the new year. Permanently."
She hears Hotch's gasp behind her a split second before Jack's climbing into her lap. "You're coming home, Emily?" he asks, sounding so excited her heart leaps. "For real? To stay?"
Emily nods, focusing on Jack because it's easy. She doesn't know if they want her back, doesn't know if they'll be quite as excited, if they'll believe her, if they even want her back. Maybe she's turned into that relative everyone loves, but also loves to see once a year.
"Yeah," she says to Jack. "I have an apartment already, too. They should be delivering my stuff from London this week."
"Emily."
It takes Garcia's breathless utterance of her name to snap everyone into exuberant exclamations of both confusion and unfettered happiness. But there is absolutely nothing like the shock, awe and breathless adoration that is all over Hotch's face.
"Merry Christmas," she says on a laugh, just under the cacophony of everyone else.
He grins and pulls her in for a lovely, thorough kiss. "Indeed."