Christmas Gift Fic Exchange

Worth The Wait

2014

"This is the life," Penelope Garcia announced, before tipping her glass back to finish her glass of champagne. "I feel like a real life princess in a castle tonight."

"You're a princess everyday," Morgan said. His arm wrapped around her waist.

Rossi chuckled. "It's no fairytale to spend Christmas with politicians."

"Cheers to that," Hotch said, clinking his glass against Rossi's.

Reid said "I was going to spend it dusting my books."

"Of course you were, Spence," JJ said.

Everyone chuckled.

Emily rolled her eyes but couldn't help but smile.

Thank God for good friends, Emily Prentiss thought as she stood in the middle of one of her mother fancy holiday parties. She hadn't been to one of these in years and there was a good reason: she hated them.

But this year guilt had brought her home for the holidays.

A shadow on the film of her mother's annual mammogram had made them both fear the worst. They leaned on each other as they waited for word on if it was cancer or not. Luckily, she was pronounced healthy but not until a biopsy confirmed it.

Those days of waiting and wondering about the results had brought Emily and her mother closer than they had been in years. Working in Europe probably helped that too. The Prentiss woman tended to do better when they were over the phone.

Tonight Emily's old team from the BAU had agreed to attend this party and be buffers between them. She couldn't explain to them how appreciative she was that she wasn't stuck there with just her mom and all those stuffy, judgmental, fake political types.

She had once been engaged to a man like that- when she was twenty two and didn't know any better. Her mother still mourned the life Emily never lived with Grant. Emily considered it the best break of her life that she had gotten offered a job in Interpol right before the wedding. Grant had said it was him or the job.

Easiest choice ever. She only realized in that moment when she told him she was leaving that she had been forcing herself to love him because it seemed like the thing to do. After that she always seemed to have bad luck when it came to love. Almost as if her love life was cursed. Work is where she shone. And so work is what she gave her heart.

And the members of the BAU. In their own ways, each of them held a piece of her and always would.

The doorbell rang. Emily watched as the butler walked over and opened the door. The sound of singing voices filled the air.

"Carolers!" Penelope cried, darting for the door, dragging Derek with her.

Others followed and stepped into the cool night air to hear the impromptu Christmas concert on the lawn. Emily smiled as she saw that a lot of the carolers were children. They all held a lit candle that was stuck in an orange.

It took a moment for her to recognize the song they were singing: Pipes of Peace by Paul McCartney.

Considering this was Washington, DC, where all the decisions about war were made it made perfect sense to sing that song while going door to door of some of the most powerful people in the world. Goosebumps skittered down her arms, from the song, not the frigid weather.

Maybe she was just getting sentimental the older she got but her heart filled as she listened to them sing.

Ten minutes later people were crammed in the kitchen, getting hot chocolate, hot toddies and spiced cider from the caterers, to warm up after the brief, foray outside. Reid was rambling on, explaining that the carolers had been holding something called a Christingle.

He was really getting into explaining the whole history of why the candle came to be stuck in the orange with four toothpicks alongside it, fruit and nuts stuck on the toothpick.

"Handsome, you look adorable with that red nose," Emily said to Reid. Maybe she had down a few too many champagnes with Garcia. Usually she was better at keeping thoughts like that inside her head.

"Do I?" he asked, in a completely surprised and innocent tone. "No one has ever called me adorable before."

Derek interrupted the moment. "I call you adorable all the time, kid."

"You don't count," Reid told him.

Derek teased. "Why because I'm not as beautiful as Prentiss? You better give her a reason not to go back to Europe, pretty boy. I'm sure that is the only Christmas present any of us want."

"True," Penelope and JJ said at the same time.

Reid blushed. His eyes locked on Emily's. After a moment he said "There is a Christmas concert going on down at-"

"Yes, I'd love to go with you." A smile spread across her lips.

This time she knew better than to turn him down when he asked her for a date. Spencer Reid wanting to take her out on a date was the only Christmas present Emily wanted for herself that year.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

That weekend, after they left the concert, they ended up at a cozy, little bistro, decorated in dark woods.

"Do you think you'll come to visit again soon?" Reid asked. "I've missed you."

The way he said those words tugged at her heart. All evening she had felt a lightness in her heart and she knew the reason was the man next to her. Still the words tumbled out of her mouth before she could stop them "I noticed...by all the times you didn't write or call."

"I didn't know what to say."

"It's me, Reid."

"I know. That's why."

"We were close before...if you wanted to keep that all you had to do was reach out, just once, and I would have reached back. Don't let it happen again."

He reached out and covered her hand with us. She smiled brightly.

"God," Emily groaned with a chuckle. "One smile from you and I'd agree to anything. I liked it better when you were like a robot. I had defenses against that."

He blinked his big, dark puppy dog eyes at her endearingly and she felt her heart flip over twice in her chest. If she didn't know before then that she was in love with him- and she did, she had known for years- she knew it for sure then.

Maybe she just realized she had never really gotten over him in the first place. Despite all the bad dates and lies to herself that she had.

He asked "Did you miss me too, Emily?"

"You tell me. What do my micro expressions say?"

"Never trust micro expressions when you're emotionally invested with the person displaying them."

She burst out into laughter. "Okay. Yes, Reid, I missed you."

"I promised myself that if you were ever standing before me again I would tell you not to go away another time, because I don't do so well when you go away...I was trying to say that all night at your mother's party."

Her heart swelled even more. "Just kiss me already!"

He smiled brightly before leaning over and giving her a gentle kiss.

Best. Christmas. Ever, Emily thought the moment their lips touched. Worth. The. Wait.

THE END