Note- This story immediately follows the season six episode "The Thirteenth Step."

The Zero Hour

Reid and Prentiss

January 2011

No matter what I do, he's going to hunt me down and kill me. I'm a dead woman.

Her heart raced, her head filled with memories and fears, as she jumped into her car and quickly drove away from the restaurant. Her eyes darted to the mirror often, trying to tell if she was being followed.

Emily Prentiss was not known to give into irrational worries or cower in any situation. She was strong, too independent for her own good, able to fight her own battles and never burden anyone else with her pain. But this night she wasn't thinking clearly. Tonight she wasn't strong, sure, ready to fight.

The past that she thought was dead and buried was coming back to swallow her whole. She had just been informed by Sean that Ian Doyle had escaped prison and was off the grid. A man who wouldn't rest till he got his revenge on her. This meant she would be looking over her shoulder every second till he was caught...or till he caught up with her.

A shiver shot down her spine. She pulled a U-turn and sped, on instinct, away from her own apartment building to a quieter neighborhood in DC. A smaller, brick building that was pre-war era. It was nearly ten pm. They had gotten back from their latest case four hours before. It was doubtful that he would be sleeping yet.

But he sure wouldn't expect her to show up at his door.

XXXXXXXXX

He wasn't expecting company so the frantic pounding on his apartment door took him by the surprise. Spencer Reid was sitting in a leather back chair, laptop perched on his lap, playing online poker. He set aside the computer and hurried to the door.

After looking through the peep hole he quickly disabled the alarm, turned the locks and pulled the door open. She stood there, with her brown eyes wide and filled with some unnamed yet worrisome emotions, her hair slightly a mess (as if she had been running her fingers through it repeatedly), and visibly shivering.

He couldn't remember ever seeing her look so freaked out before. And she had never stopped by his place uninvited either.

"Emily, what's the matter?"

Her mouth opened and closed, as if she didn't know how to explain it, and then a second later she was all over him. She grabbed his face in her slightly chilled hands, her clothes a little damp from the falling snow outside, smashed herself against his body, so hard that he stumbled back a step, while her lips crashed against his lips.

Though Reid was shocked by her actions there was still something pleasant about a warm body pressed against his, her hands sliding down his cheeks, over his jaw and throat, against his shirt, fingers twisting the fabric. She tasted like coffee, mints and something else undefined but sweeter.

After a quick moment he jerked back, eyebrow arched. "Emily?"

In her eyes wasn't desire as much as stark, desperate need. "I didn't come here to talk."

She stretched up to try and capture his lips again but he jerked back slightly, evading her mouth though not breaking the contact of their bodies.

"Its feels like you need to."

"I know what I need." Her eyes searched his.

He was at a loss for why she wanted this. What had happened to make her scared and hurting, needy, willing to come to his door and ask for comfort and something that would make everything from now on messy between them?

Spencer Reid was the type of man who hated not understanding something- and often the thing he could not understand most was women. He perfectly understood loneliness and aching for someone to be there to hold you when everything turned scary and painful. There were many times he had felt that particular empty way in his life- especially lately.

Still he didn't know why Emily would pick him to come and see when she felt this way. She never had done this before. Never shown him this much vulnerability, clung to him as if he could save her from some unknown devil nipping at her heels. She was always so strong, even during the worse of times, that he hadn't imagined that she'd let down her walls and admit she couldn't do it all alone. And if she did, he hadn't thought it would be him that she would reach out to.

But she was. That was exactly what she was doing. Even if he wasn't good with women he could see that plain as day. She reached up and very gently, with just her fingertips, brushed his cheek. Her voice was choked when she asked "Please?"

There were so many reasons why he should say no. Their friendship, their jobs, her pain was clouding her judgement, but instead of saying anything he simply closed his eyes and let out a short breath. He could feel how stiff her body was against his, feel her pain and hurt, feel her need. And he was helpless to resist it, though he felt he should.

He would do anything he could to help Emily and the thing she needed most tonight was this. It wasn't about if it was right or wrong, or what may happen tomorrow, what consequence there would be to bear later. It was simply a matter of him not being able to send her back into the cold, dark, lonely night- because if he ever came to someone like she had come to him tonight that is the last thing Spencer would have wanted to have happen to him.

The moment he made up his mind all he could think about was that he was a second away from tasting her again. His eyes fluttered open, met hers for a brief second and then he dipped his head and took her lips in a kiss full of a sureness he hadn't felt until right then.

When Spencer Reid went in, he went all in.