a/n: This is my first attempt at Hotch/Prentiss, and I'm quite nervous about it, so any thoughts you may have are welcome! It's a oneshot based loosely off the Season 7 finale, "Run." Rated T for minor language and minor adult themes.

The explosion from inside the bank rocked the entire block. Hotch did what Hotch did best, the thing that made him an excellent Unit Chief: he compartmentalized. Ignoring the ghastly debris scattered along the street, the whirring sirens of emergency responders, and the shouts from beyond the yellow FBI tape, Hotch set out to quickly count his people.

There was Morgan, with his arm wrapped tightly around JJ's middle, easing them both off the ground. To his right, Dave was brushing off his soot covered pants and straightening his vest. Reid was attempting to explain to the emergency responders who was where in the bank when the blast had gone off. Hotch remembered Garcia and Strauss were posted in the FBI van a mere hundred feet behind the blast site. A quick whirl on his feet and Hotch scanned the van behind him; satisfied to see it remained whole where it stood. So that left Prentiss. Where in god's name was Emily?

They weren't officially a couple, especially not in public, but Hotch's rising panic spoke volumes of his growing feelings for the leggy, ivory skinned agent.

Ebony hair, eyelashes as long as spider's legs, that throaty laugh, the gentle edges of the clover on her breast that she despised so deeply. The way she made his heart flutter so intensely when she drew her fingers through his hair.

The way she made him feel whole where he felt otherwise empty.

Hotch heard Morgan shout, "Emily! Where's Emily?" And his pulse quickened and a burst of fear shot through his chest, coiling through his insides.

Please god no. Not yet. We haven't had enough time.

Rubbing his aching, ringing ears, Hotch jogged over to Morgan, who had just thrown his hands up in frustration after JJ, who moments earlier, had run into the smoking remains of the bank without backup.

Their resources and manpower were quickly dwindling, Will was inside, damnit, Emily was nowhere to be found, and his people were obviously all on edge having just survived a massive explosion.

"You were in there with her, Morgan. Where's Prentiss?" Hotch knew trying to flag down JJ was futile, so his compartmentalization skills came into play again and his focus shifted momentarily to Emily.

His Emily.

"I don't know, damnit," Morgan growled. "One minute she was inside the bank next to me, and the next I was out here knocked on my ass."

"Go back in and go find her. And JJ. Take Dave with you. I'll run interference from out here."

Weapons holstered at the ready, Morgan and Rossi hustled back inside the razed bank to find their girls.

Hotch's lip twitched and he knew the tightness starting in his chest was not a symptom of an injury from the explosion. He felt pieces of his armoured exterior chipping away with each passing moment she was still inside.

The chaos continued to swell around him and when Strauss emerged shortly from the FBI van and tapped his shoulder, Hotch felt whatever loose grasp he had on his sense of control start to slip.

"Agent Hotchner. Are you alright?"

"Fine," came the clipped response. "Where are we on locating the unsubs?"

Hotch followed Strauss back into the FBI van, where Reid and Garcia were handling damage control from around Garcia's many computer screens.

When Morgan's voice crackled over the intercom a mere seven minutes later announcing he found Prentiss trying to help an injured elderly couple inside and that she was fine, Hotch felt a combination of searing anger as he wondered why she didn't just get herself the hell outta there and relief so intense, it was frightening.

It made him dizzy momentarily, and he thought it was the most acutely combined sense of anger and relief he had felt since uncovering Jack nestled safely in his toy box after Foyet had killed his mother.

He realized an hour later he was wrong.

When Emily cut out her own COM network while disabling the bomb strapped to Will – there it was again: that blistering anger so consuming, Hotch thought his head would explode.

Why is this the second time today there's a goddamned bomb threatening to blow her to bits?

And when, thirty seconds later, she reconnected her earpiece and she breathed an exhausted Hotch into his ear that spoke volumes, he thought his heart would burst with utter relief.

She's alive. She's alive. She's alive. He chanted over and over again.

So this is how it's going to go, he mused as he raced to locate her and Will, Prentiss is gonna run my emotions amuck.

He traced a finger gently down her naked spine later that night as the warm May rain pelted the window beside them.

Hotch breathed her in, drank in her scent and couldn't remember the last time he had felt so completely whole.

And then there it was again, that acute sense of relief. Relief that, for another day, they simply had more time.