December 16, 2013

She finds a text message on her phone the next morning.

It's half an hour old, which means they probably haven't even left yet. But the point of the matter is this: the case is done. He's coming home.

Jack can't wait anymore than she can and when Emily passes on the information that his Daddy will soon be home, he's half way into his snow gear before she even realizes what's going on. She cannot convince him to slow down, no matter how many times she explains to him that just because she has a text message doesn't mean that Daddy will be home by the time they get to Quantico.

Well, that and she's pretty sure her history with the Bureau and her INTERPOL creds'll only get her so far.

But Jack is insistent, so she packs up a handful of cookies – okay, way more than a handful, but she and Jack had definitely gone overboard with the baking and there's absolutely no way they'll be able to eat all of them – and they head to the BAU.

She has no problems with her ID. She gets lucky again in that the desk security is an agent she's familiar with and lets them through. She has to flash her INTERPOL badge a couple of times, but she has a trustworthy face and a child so they get to the BAU without much hassle, the same way they'd done when Jack had decided to drop off the candy canes. They get rid of what is probably an entire container of cookies before they hit the BAU.

And then, well, they wait.

. . . . .

He's never wanted to be back in DC in his life.

He has worked some of the worst cases a man – or woman – could see and even those days, even the days when Haley was pregnant, when Jack was a baby, after Haley had been killed, hell the days when he'd been a newlywed, they'd never felt like this. This is something entirely new and shockingly all-encompassing. In fact, he's pretty sure his legendary control is the only thing that keeps him from somehow expressing all of this.

And yeah, Rossi keeps shooting him these knowing looks and Reid looks a little put out when Hotch snaps a little too hard at the genius during the 'clean up' process, but really only a piece of him cares.

The other piece of him is focused on the fact that he's about to go home to Jack and Emily.

Jack and Emily.

There's a part of him that definitely cannot even believe it. It's a surreal concept. He's used to Emily being on the plane with him, joking, calming, but she's not here. She hasn't been for a while. He's not totally sure if going home to her – God, going home to her – is better or worse than simply having her with him.

All he knows is that he needs to be on the ground now.

It's an agonizing process. So much so that he's actually drained as they file into the offices of the BAU. He has hours worth of paperwork to close out the case too, but he'll wait. He's definitely going to wait. He won't even take it home either. Jack's there. Emily's there. It can all wait.

Maybe if he's lucky, if he plays his cards right, it can always wait.

He's wondered about it, he can't lie; what it would be like to have Emily with him permanently. Even more so now that she's actually with him more often, outside of the office and without the constrains of the job. One thing he's always valued about Emily, since long before now, is her ability to settle him. The things they see, that he sees, aren't for just anyone. It's actually a major reason his marriage to Haley disintegrated, he knows that now. But Emily…

Not Emily.

"Welcome back, my heroes!"

Garcia, of course. She greets them at the door to the BAU every time they return from a case. He knows the system, but he shifts past her while she's hugging Morgan. He's going to his office with a single-mindedness that he's definitely going to catch flak for later.

He.

Does.

Not.

Care.

He all but throws his briefcase on his couch, his go-bag dropping right next to it. There's a couple of things he does have to do before he can call it a night. His office is dark, blinds drawn as they usually are when he's not in the office. It's terribly comforting in comparison to the plane. Maybe it's because he's that much closer to home now.

And it feels damn good.

He's so focused on the task ahead of him that he completely misses the shadow that falls in the doorway.

"Cookie?"

She's shadowed, but he knows that figure, knows that shape. As well as he can. And she's a sight for sore eyes, that's for sure. She releases a sound – he's apparently grasped her wrist and tugged her into him – but then his lips are on hers and holy crap he does not care about anything.

Well, okay, it's a bit of a lie. He cares about this, about the feel of her back beneath his hands, the smell of her, the brush of her hair and the feel of her lips as she responds to him. He feels the pinch of her fingernails, unintentional, against his neck. It's a beautiful thing to feel her again, to smell her, to be able to grasp her hip and pull it into him.

She laughs a little when he releases her for air and he realizes she's got both hands on his neck and she looks a little glazed. "Hi."

"Hi."

She shivers and it makes him smile just a little bit wider.

But then she gets a hold of herself again and her smile turns less dazed. She looks properly happy to see him now, and he wonders, just briefly, if maybe she really has missed him as much as he's missed her.

"So. You never did answer the question about the cookies."

He wraps his arm around her again because it's dark enough in his office and because she's here and he bloody well can, and says, "Maybe at home."

"Home," she says with a smile and only a little bit of an arched eyebrow. "That sounds good."

It sounds like the best idea he's had in a while.

So… Unanticipated absolute and complete business. Seriously. It's kind of insane. It'll all go away on Monday, but I'm going to see if I can wedge in an hour to get working on 17 tomorrow. I actually have to figure out what I'm going to write too. I forgot my plan for it at home so I'm going to have to do some finagling and maybe come up with something. I don't know. Maybe it won't really be a tradition? We'll see.

In the meantime, bless you all. Each and every reader out there who is still sticking with this and it's mostly fluffiness. Apparently the angst is saving itself for Homecoming when I get around to writing that one out. Maybe soon. It requires quite the mood to write it out because, spoilers, we're not at a good spot there.

Loves and the happiest of new years!