Hotchniss One-Shots

the last time

The jet landed long past midnight, the hum of the engines still caught in Hotch's bones. Everyone was too wrung out to talk. They filed off the plane like shadows, murmured their goodbyes in the dark, and slipped into waiting cars.

Hotch didn't remember the drive from Quantico to his house. He remembered only the weight in his chest, the gnawing silence in the passenger seat where Jack should have been. Jessica had taken him before they left for the case. It was too late to pick him up now. Too late to do anything but walk into an empty house and face the ghosts waiting there.

He couldn't.

The dashboard clock glowed 3:17 a.m. as he drove past his exit. Streets blurred past in sodium-orange light, his hands tight around the wheel. He told himself he was only driving to clear his head. He told himself he'd go home soon. But the road pulled him in another direction, one he didn't fight.

When he stopped, he was staring at Emily Prentiss's building.

The car engine ticked into silence. He sat for a long time, forehead pressed to the steering wheel, hating himself for being here, needing to be here anyway. His feet carried him up the stairs, each step too loud in the stillness. And then he was standing in front of her door, staring at the brass numbers, his pulse hammering in his throat.

He almost left. Almost. But his knuckles tapped against the wood before he could turn away.

Inside, movement. A pause. Then the click of a lock.

Emily opened the door in sweats and a rumpled T-shirt, her hair messy from sleep. She blinked at him, confused for half a second, and then something softened in her eyes.

"Aaron?"

The sound of his name in her voice cracked something inside him. He swallowed. "I... I didn't know where else to go."

She didn't ask questions. She stepped back, letting him in.

Her apartment was warm, low-lit from a single lamp on the side table. Books and case files cluttered the coffee table, half a glass of wine abandoned beside them. Emily brushed past him, wordless, and filled the kettle. Hotch stood in the middle of the living room like an intruder.

When she came back, she set a mug in front of him. Tea, not coffee — she knew better than to offer caffeine at this hour. She folded herself into the armchair across from him, curling her legs underneath her, waiting.

He wrapped his hands around the mug without drinking. The heat steadied him.

For a long while, neither spoke. Emily curled into the chair, knees tucked beneath her. She watched him with that steady, unreadable gaze she carried into interrogations, except here it was softer, threaded with patience.

"This isn't the first time you've ended up here," she said quietly.

He flinched at her accuracy. "No."

"And it won't be the last, will it?"

Hotch swallowed, throat tight. "I shouldn't—"

"Don't." She reached out, laying a hand lightly on his arm. "Don't apologize."

His eyes closed briefly, as if the simple touch broke something open inside him. When he spoke again, his voice was rough, uneven.

"I walk out of the office, I think about going home. But every time... I end up here." He turned his head, finally meeting her eyes. "I don't even know what I'm asking of you."

Emily's chest tightened. She wanted to tell him she already knew. That she felt it too, every time he showed up at her door. That she let him in not out of pity, but because some part of her had always been waiting for him to come.