𝐇𝐚𝐥𝐟 𝐨𝐟 𝐇𝐞𝐫

eight

*contains mature content of a sexual nature. Please don't read if this will make you uncomfortable or if you are young. That being said, enjoy <3

...

And he kissed her back.

God, he kissed her. She was everything that was missing and, now that she was in his arms, he realised sharply just how much he needed her. For the first time in five years, he was alive; he was awake; he was breathing again for the first time. But he was also ill with the sudden understanding of what Lou felt. Of course, he understood grief in a way no one should have to but he had never lost someone that he needed as much as he needed air.

That had been Lou and Avery. So different yet so similar. Inseparable yet separated. Lou was his version of that.

He just hoped she felt the same.

Lou often felt like she was not her own. It was difficult to explain. She felt like parts of her belonged to, and were entangled with, other people. When Avery died, Lou died too. When Hotch left, part of her left too. That's why, Lou often thought, she felt so strange and so hollow: she was not her own. She was made up of shadows from the past, more than one ghost and the impressions of people she couldn't remember meeting.

Neither had ever underestimated their feelings for one another but, until that exact moment with skin against skin, they had not understood their enormity nor recognised the crushing weight they had carried with them for so many years.

But they hadn't lost each other, at least, not forever —that much was clear as she sighed softly against his mouth, her breath hot and agitated against his lips. He tasted like sugar and autumn leaves and morning rain. She tasted like honey and coffee and all the pains of the past. They parted for annoyingly necessary breaths, both their hearts beating so fast and so furiously that each swore they could hear the others.

He reached out to touch her face, his thumb tracing her chapped skin, "You're all I think about."

Lou suppressed a whimper. She wasn't thinking. She wasn't even feeling (she suspected that was because it would have been too complex). All she knew was that she wanted —needed— him in that moment. She had to have him or else she'd die.

Once again, her lips met his. Not breaking contact and driven by an animalistic urgency, he pulled her into his lap. The soft sigh the manoeuvre elicited from her mouth was enough to dive him mad. She wrapped her legs around his waist, in the same fashion she had done all those years ago. She was sure that her body remembered even more than her mind —he certainly seemed to. He lifted her by the back of the knee, moving so that he was on top of her and she was flat against the sofa.

He paused then, to look into her tortured grey eyes. He pushed the hair from her face, almost angry at its temerity to obscure any of her beautiful features. She bit her lip, trying not to sigh as she met his gaze, his violently hazel eyes threatening to get lost in hers. She nodded, letting him know that he could do whatever he wanted to her. Usually cold and measured, her expression was pleading and vulnerable. Please, it read, please take me.

It took her longer than it should to unbuckle his belt because her fingers were shaking and, before she could manage, his fingertips were distractingly playing with the hem of her T-shirt. She propped herself up then and eagerly took off her top. She went to unclasp her bra but he stopped her, he did not want to rush this. He wanted to savour every second of her. He wanted her to intoxicate him. He wanted to make her see stars.

He kissed her neck, her chest, her breasts. Lou struggled with every ounce of her being to let him be slow with her. She wanted him to fuck her right then. But she couldn't deny she was in heaven as he wrestled with the buttons of her jeans, his hand slipping under the thin fabric of her underwear. When he touched her, he gasped. Their foreheads met and their breath became one in the space between their lips. He had remembered her being the best he'd ever had but his memories had not done her justice.