She leans against the bar beside him, runs her hand through her hair – it's growing out now, hitting her shoulders again after the short cut she had when she came back from Paris. He notices, of course he does – he's been noticing her all night, not to mention the last several years – but he wants to claw his face off when he hears himself say it out loud. "Your hair's getting long again."
A hint of surprise flickers across her face, but it's quickly replaced by an easy smile, rarer these days than before she left. She nods. "You cut yours," she says, reaching up, running her fingers through his hair. It's so unexpected he laughs, and she does too, ruffling his hair and dropping her hand back down, entwining her fingertips with his.
He squeezes before he's even really registered the intimacy of the whole thing. "Emily Prentiss," he says, eyebrows raised. "Are you drunk?"
"Maybe," she replies, tilting her head and smiling back. Tipsy, he assesses – she is very much in control of herself. And quite possibly him. "Why do you ask?"
"What are you doing?" he says, and he hears the smile in his voice, sees it reflected in her eyes.
"I'm flirting with you, Hotch," she replies – her tone is dry, but there's an irresistible heat in her eyes as her hand slides up his arm and over his shoulder, coming to rest at the back of his neck.
He knows he shouldn't encourage her. Or himself. He should excuse himself, call a cab and go home. She'll be embarrassed tomorrow, he knows, but they'll get over it. It's not like they don't both know there's attraction there, on both sides. They also both know there are a whole plethora of reasons they should keep it buried. But it's getting harder every second to remember those reasons, to stop himself from responding to the intensity of her gaze, the soft warmth of her palm on his neck. His hands drift to her waist and there's a gleam of something like anticipation in her eyes as she guides him toward the dancefloor, into the anonymous crowd of tightly packed dancing bodies. The team are here somewhere, he thinks absently, but can't look away from her long enough to find them. She carves out a space for them easily, hooks her hands together at the back of his neck. "This okay?" she says.
The feel of her swaying hips under his hands races through his blood, gets his heart pounding so hard he can barely think. He nods. She smiles, drops her gaze, and when she looks back up her lip is caught between her teeth, her eyes sparkling but uncertain. She comes closer, wraps her arms tighter around him, and he's not even sure he's still breathing. "This okay?" she repeats, softer, and he can feel her breath on his neck. He nods again, and she rests her head on his shoulder, presses their bodies together, and this time he actually feels the breath catch in his chest. "Hotch?"
He nuzzles her hair, spreads his hands out over her back. He wants to answer her, but the words get lost on the way to his mouth, and eventually she pulls back just far enough to meet his eyes. "I want to ask you something, and I don't want it to make anything weird."
It occurs to him that the time to stop things from getting weird has passed, but he just nods, and she chews her lip for another second. "Can I kiss you?"
His mind races and stutters to a halt. He's told himself it's a bad idea for so long, but he wants nothing more. "Yes," he says, feeling the enormity of it only when her eyes shine and her smile trembles, and she tilts her head, brushes his lips softly – it takes him a second to respond, and when he does she relaxes into him instantly. When they pull back, she rests her head on his shoulder again and they sway gently, their hands spread over each other's backs for as much contact as they can get. He expected it to feel wrong – for his mind to kick in and tell him he shouldn't be doing this. Bu it feels perfect. "How do you feel?" he whispers, because he doesn't know what else to say.
She presses her lips to his cheek and mumbles something that might be 'home'.