Ok so this is all about Emily moving in with Hotch. Of course the team have been roped in to help out.
I've also decided that until "100" (or "Outfoxed" if I decide to do a chapter for that episode) Hotch is going to go back to the way he was before he was stabbed, a.k.a happy, because writing all this angst and sorrow is starting to depress me. So this chapter and the next one (and maybe the one after that) is going to be happy, happy, happy! YAY!
It's October 2009, Emily is 39 and Hotch is 43... Still.
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"Living together is an art." – William Pickens.
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"Damn it Emily have you been on a killing spree or something!" Morgan exclaimed as he lifted one of her many suitcases out of her car.
"Why the hell are you asking me that?" Emily asked, giving him a blank stare, as she reached into the trunk of her car and pulled out a bag containing clothes.
"Because there's either a body in this suitcase or you've decided to take your brick collection to Hotch's place with you!" Morgan told her, as he struggled slightly with the case.
"Nope... I'm pretty sure there's books in that one." Emily told him, looking at the case.
"Aw, don't tell me Macho Morgan can't lift a few itty bitty books." JJ teased as she skipped past him carrying a box that contained a few pictures.
"Aw 'Hot Stuff' don't listen to them, they're just jealous of this." Garcia flirted, grabbing Morgan's upper arm as she walked past with another bag of clothes.
"Here, I'll carry this end an' you carry that'n'." Will told him in his thick accent, as he took the right end of the case, almost dropping it however when the weight hit him.
"Damn it honey, how much books do ya read?" Will exclaimed to Emily who was walking past.
"Oh for god sakes, it's a case of books... suck it up and carry it in!" She told them as she walked past.
JJ, Emily, Garcia, Morgan and Will... who were still struggling slightly, but refusing to show it... made their way down to Hotch's apartment, where Hotch and Rossi were assembling a new bed in Hotch's room, as Reid read out the instructions.
"How's the bed assembly going?" Emily asked Austin and Kevin, who were unwrapping the few ornaments Emily had brought from her place in the sitting room.
"For Christ sakes Reid! You've told us to connect the two posts at right angles three times now, read the next bloody instruction!" Rossi could be heard shouting from the room in sheer frustration.
"Dave just ignore Reid, if you turn around again the whole damn bed is going to collapse, and I'm not starting from scratch again." Hotch snapped.
"That's how it's going." Kevin told them with a bemused smile.
"Right... um next instruction... uh wait a second, I lost where I was reading from..." Reid stammered.
"Reid I swear to god I'll shoot you if you don't read out the next instruction within five seconds!" Rossi bellowed. "One... two... three..."
"I think it's time us ladies took over in there." Emily said, dropping her clothes bag in a corner.
"Yea, I like Spencer more when he doesn't have a bullet wound in his chest." Austin agreed, as she placed down the vase she'd just taken out of a box and began to follow Emily into the room, with JJ and Garcia close behind.
"Emily, why the hell do you and Hotch need a new bed? Was the one he had before not perfectly all right?" Rossi exclaimed once Emily and the other women walked in the bedroom door.
"It was alright... if the people sleeping in it were very small." Emily told him innocently.
"Or if they were actually sleeping." Garcia added under her breath, earning a glare from Hotch and Emily and a laugh from everyone else in the room.
"Plus when Jack comes back, he's probably going to jump on top of us at five o clock every single morning, like he used to." Emily added, "So we'll need room for three."
"And eventually four and five and six." Hotch added with a wink, in a visibly better mood than he had been for the last number of weeks... having the team around him, and his girlfriend moving in having really lifted his spirits.
"Pfft, speak for yourself... four and five maybe, but six! What the hell do you think I am?" Emily joked, happy that Hotch was finally coming back out of his shell and turning back into the man she loved.
"Ok, as interesting as it is for the two of you to talk babies, there's only three legs on this bed, and if I move my hand there'll be no bed at all, so can we please get back to work?" Rossi asked as he looked between the two.
"Ok, you three," JJ said, pointing at Rossi, Hotch and Reid, "Need to get out of here before someone gets hurt... we'll take over from here and you can help Will, Morgan and Kevin take in the rest of the stuff." She commanded.
The three men didn't argue with the women's orders... not wanting to see another bed unless they were going to be sleeping in it... and all three rushed out to help the others, Reid saying to show Austin what instruction he had been on before following the others out.
"Men!" Emily sighed as she looked at the sorry excuse for a bed in front of her.
"Oh god!" Austin exclaimed. "Reid skipped number three, we need to start over." She told the women.
"Honey, have you seen the sate of this... we were going to have to start over anyway." Garcia laughed, as he began to unscrew one of the legs.
"Why do we ever trust men with things?" JJ asked the others dramatically as she began to place all pieces of the bed that were the same into separate piles, instead of the jumble they had been in.
"We like the challenge of cleaning up after them." Emily supplied as she began unscrewing the other leg on the bed.
~.~.~.~.~.~
Fifteen minutes later the women reappeared from the room, looking pleased with themselves, to find the men had just finished bringing the last box in from outside, and had almost everything put away.
"Tell me you aren't done already!" Hotch exclaimed when he seen the smug looks on the women's faces.
"Aw sorry honey... we were even taking our time so as not to show you up to much." Emily teased, placing a kiss on the side of his shocked looking face, and leaning against him happily, wrapping her arm around his waist and letting his arm slide around her waist as well.
"How can that even be possible?" Rossi asked the group, also in shock.
"Well Spencer may have accidentally skipped the third instruction... so I'm guessing that's what threw you of." Austin supplied the men.
"I'm going to bloody hang, draw and quarter you!" Rossi growled at a frightened looking Reid, who immediately jumped behind Morgan and Will, using their bodies as shields.
"Sorry Reid, but my guns at home, so I'm not gettin' between you an' a federal agent." Will told Reid before jumping out of the way swiftly.
"Chicken." JJ teased, nudging Will in the ribs when he stood beside her.
"See that don't even hurt my feelin's anymore Cher, 'cause I know deep down you don't mean it." Will teased back, wrapping his arms around JJ's waist from behind.
JJ rolled her eyes but leant back against Will anyway, resting her head between his neck and his shoulder.
"Ok, well all this work's making me hungry... where we eating?" Morgan asked after a second, his stomach grumbling in agreement.
"There's a pizza place around the corner from here, I'll call them now if you lot give me your orders." Hotch told the room, walking over to the phone as he spoke.
~.~.~.~.~.~
It wasn't until much later that evening that Hotch and Emily finally managed to get the team to leave, insisting that they could do the remainder of the unpacking themselves... because the second the pizza was delivered all thoughts off unpacking everything went out the window, in favour of unwinding after a stressful couple of months.
"Well, my first day living with you and it looks like I'm going to spend it cleaning up pizza boxes." Emily sighed dramatically, but not really minding.
"Hm, looks like it." Hotch agreed as he surveyed his once clean living room, that now had dozens of empty soda cans and ten almost empty pizza boxes... because apparently no two people liked the same flavoured pizza... scattered across the floor.
"Oh well," Emily sighed as she stooped down to pick up a few of the soda cans, "the sooner we get this cleaned up, the sooner we can test how well the bed was actually made." She told Hotch with a wink.
"Now I like the sound of that." Hotch said with a smile, as he too bent down and picked up two of the pizza boxes.
The pair worked silently for a moment, both of them feeling completely natural and comfortable cleaning THEIR apartment and both relishing in the fact that they could finally say that. It wasn't until Emily spoke again that the silence was broken.
"Eww!" She exclaimed as she lifted Reid's pizza box. "I know Reid has some weird food preferences, but chicken and sweet corn? Really?" She said as she looked into the box.
"You think that's bad." Hotch replied. "I can beat you hands down, look." He said as he shoved Rossi's grape and pickle pizza under Emily's nose.
"What kind of friends do we have?" Emily laughed as she turned her head away from Rossi's pizza before it turned her stomach.
"The best kind." Hotch replied honestly as he placed the pizza box in the bin bag that was lying on the floor. "The kind you put up with my crap for months on end, and still agree to help out when we ask them at the last second."
"That's not friends Aaron... that's family." Emily told him, placing the last pizza box into the bag as she spoke. "Now how about we go and test the bed that our family made." She added with a smile, before dragging him to the bedroom.
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Ok so I'm not sure about the ending of this one, but I'll leave that up to you to decide on. Ok, chicken and sweet corn pizza tastes nice, but looks really icky (my cousin eats it all the time!) and as for grape and pickle it actually looks lovely but I personally can't stomach it at all! Tell me what you thought. =)