Alright folks, this is it! I hope you've enjoyed the ride as much as I have! Thanks again for the reviews, you guys have been amazing!

Epilogue

7 months later

The day had been exhausting and stressful, and Emily longed for a quiet evening of just doing nothing and worrying about nothing. All she wanted was some food, a comfortable couch, and take off her shoes. A glass of wine would be nice too. And hopefully Hotch would be there to make all of those things feel even better.

She had called him a few hours ago, and though he was still at work at the time, he told her he would be done early so he would meet her back at his place. Emily found a parking spot, then walked to his door. Using her key, she let herself in quietly.

She was immediately greeted by the wonderful smell of food, making her stomach grumble in anticipation. The house was quiet and dark, it was late, so she silently dropped her bags onto the floor and made her way to the kitchen. There was very little evidence of cooking, probably a result of Hotch's OCD tendencies, but Emily looked inside the fridge, and smiled at his thoughtfulness for leaving her a plate.

"Hey."

Emily turned to find him coming into the kitchen to greet her, still wearing his suit, though his tie and jacket were long gone. There was just something about him without a tie that she always found very alluring. "Hey," she greeted back as she leaned in to kiss him. She had intended it to be brief, a quick welcoming kiss, but she sighed the moment their lips touched as she realized how much she needed this right now. How much she needed him. So she stopped him from pulling away with her hands against his neck and instead leaned into him even more, deepening the kiss unexpectedly.

When she did pull back, he held onto her shoulders for a moment. "Are you alright?" he asked, with a touch of concern. Not that her kissing him in such a passionate way was unusual, but he knew her enough to know that this was different. This was tinged with desperation. "How did it go in court?" he asked with sudden dread.

She sighed with a small grimace as she stepped out of his arms and put her plate into the microwave. "Oh, you know… Is Jack asleep?"

He nodded absently, still unwaveringly staring at her.

"It went fine," she said when she realized he wouldn't let it go.

"And the cross-examination?"

She half-smiled. "A piece of cake. You trained me well with all of your great and very thorough drills."

He smirked at the sarcasm in her voice. "Good. But something didn't go so well," he stated, turning serious again. "What happened? Was there any trouble?"

Using the term 'trouble' had kind of become their code word for talking about other people finding out about their relationship. It had first started during the early days of their relationship, after Dave had found them in his kitchen, being a little too familiar with one another. At work that next day, when Hotch came out of Dave's office with his usual stern expression, Emily had asked: 'any trouble?' Fortunately, Hotch's honest talk with Dave that day had in fact clarified a few things and made the situation better between the two men, but since then, every time one of them asked if there was any 'trouble', they were usually referring to people discovering their secret. And though Dave had found out fairly quickly, the others had either not figured it out yet, or had decided to pretend they hadn't. In the end, Emily had told JJ after a couple of months, not only because she'd needed to share the news with someone other than Hotch, but also because JJ had started to become suspicious that something was up when Emily seemed always too eager to go home after work. JJ had expressed some concerns at first about the wisdom of such a relationship and how it would affect team dynamic, but after realizing that it had been going on for a couple of months and nothing had changed, she was happy and thrilled for her two friends.

Now thinking back to her day in court, Emily quickly shook her head in response to Hotch's question. "Oh no, nothing like that." It had worried them a little that their secret relationship might actually affect their credibility as expert-witnesses in court, but fortunately, nothing like that had happened as of yet. Apparently they were doing a good job of being discrete.

"Then what?"

Emily hesitated. They had learned to be very straightforward and direct with each other, but for some reason she was reluctant to share that particular piece of herself. He would understand if she told him, she knew he would, but in a way she was still a little afraid. She was afraid that this particular feeling would make her appear weak or vulnerable to his eyes. And she wouldn't be able to bear seeing that expression in his eyes.

She looked up and met his gaze, ready to deny that something was wrong, but he was looking at her with such tender concern, that her doubts were immediately pushed aside. She trusted him with her life, maybe it was time she trusted him with her heart too.

She shook her head a little, trying to deflect some of it. "It's silly…"

He raised his chin, silently encouraging her to say more.

She sighed. "Technically, everything went fine. I made my case, presented the evidence like I've done dozens of time in the past, I was able to remain convincing through the cross-examination…"

"But?"

Emily looked into his eyes. "But… even after all this time, he still gets to me, and it makes me feel… I don't know, he makes me question myself."

"Norland?" he asked, something fierce flashing in his expression for a second. Then it was gone.

She frowned as she nodded. "Seeing him just sitting there today in court, looking at me with that expression so full of... hatred, fully aware that he still has some kind of power over me… It just brought back some of those anxieties, you know?" She shook her head. "I thought I was done with it all. I thought it was all behind me."

Hotch stepped closer and closed his fingers around hers, squeezing a little.

"But anyways, I'd rather not talk about it anymore. How about we move to the living room and make out?" She was being flippant, but he didn't take the bait.

"Okay, but let me just say this first," he replied without losing a beat, looking intensely into her eyes. "Steven Norland has stopped thinking that he could ever have some kind of power over you a long time ago. You've shown him time and again that you're not afraid of him, that he has no hold over you. You were called to the stand at his trial as an expert-witness, not as one of his victims. He looks at you that way because he knows he'll never be able to make you flinch. You're unreachable to him."

Emily nodded at his words, amazed that he always knew what to say to make her feel better. She watched with awe as he stepped closer still and brought his hands up to push her hair away from her face gently. He left his hands there, on each side of her neck and face, his thumbs slowly caressing her cheeks. "And you're amazing to me," he added on a breath as he closed the short gap between them and kissed her. Softly and tenderly at first, as if he was trying to demonstrate his admiration and amazement, and though Emily enjoyed it thoroughly, she quickly upped the pace and pulled him closer, deepening the kiss. He happily responded, moving one of his arms around her waist and pulling her flush against him. Emily moaned contentedly at the contact and she felt him smile against her skin as his lips moved from her lips to her neck.

Even after all those months, she still found herself bewildered that this was real, that before this whole case she had never imagined Aaron Hotchner as the perfect match for her. How could it be, when they were now so attuned to each other? How could she not have recognized it for so long?

Oh the past few months hadn't been easy, and in some ways it wasn't easy still. It had taken a lot of adjustments at work and compromises in their personal habits to make their relationship work. They had agreed to some basic rules, such as not to pair up together on cases, to sleep apart when they were staying in hotels while on the job, but they had been so intent at first on hiding and avoiding any kind of physical contact, that even Reid had noticed the tension. They had blamed it on that particular case they were working on at the time and how it was affecting all of them, but it had taken a while to find a balance that suited them both and didn't negatively impact their focus.

That had been particularly difficult after those first, intense and wonderful nights they had spent together that summer, but they had managed to find ways to deal with the knowledge they now had of what it was like to be intimate with each other. Usually it meant avoiding being in the same room together for a long period of time. But as time went on and they became more at ease both with each other and with their relationship, all of that time tiptoeing around and misstepping seemed to have brought them closer together somehow. Even those few months of Jack's angry phase at seeing his father with another woman, though extremely taxing for all three of them, had brought them all closer. It turned out that fate, or whatever power there was out there, had found a way for them to find each other and actually make it work.

"You really were serious about making out," Hotch drawled playfully against the skin of her collarbone as he walked her backward until her back hit the kitchen counter.

Emily chuckled as she tugged his shirt from his pants. "You know I'm always serious about that."

"Hm-mm," was his mumbled, amused reply, as his hands slid under her sweater to caress the skin of her waist and back, making her shiver. "What about dinner?" he asked as his fingers teased a particularly sensitive spot.

"Overrated," she gasped, making him chuckle softly against her skin.

He pulled back from her slightly, smiling, but his eyes dark and earnest, as his hand slid to hers and he started walking backward, pulling her with him in a silent invitation.

Emily smiled, returning his loving gaze.

It struck her that in all of their time together, they had never ascribed a name to what they were feeling for each other, never really mentioning the scary L word. And it had never bothered her, just because showing instead of talking was more like them. She had even suspected that Hotch was afraid that if he said the words, it would scare her away. It was sweet, in a way, but as she held his gaze now, she suddenly felt a rush of emotions that she couldn't quite contain.

She stopped his backward movement and gazed at him in earnest. "You know I love you, right?"

He looked surprised for a second, his lips pursing together and his eyebrows raised, and suddenly Emily was afraid that she had scared him off. But then he exhaled and tugged on her hand to pull her closer again, his smile returning to his lips.

"Good," he said simply.

"Good?" Emily repeated incredulously, pulling back slightly. "That's your reply?"

His smile turned amused at her reaction and he leaned in close again, his fingers softly touching her cheeks. "Only part of it."

And then he kissed her again, his love for her spoken on a breath every time he had a chance.

"And if you have

Another dream in which you drown love

I'll go to sleep and track you down

We'll sink together in the sea

Comfortably sweet"

- Comfortably Sweet by Steven Bowers (Feat. Christina Martin)

The END

One final comment: this story was mostly about the "chase" part of the romance, which is why I decided to go with an epilogue rather than writing the "what happens after." The problems they had to go through in the aftermath (at work and with Jack) could have made a whole new story, but at the moment I'm not ready to write it in more details. But who knows, maybe I'll put it down on paper eventually :-) Oh and with regards to the team knowing about the relationship, I like to think Hotch and Emily weren't as good as they thought in hiding it and that the rest of the team all figured it out pretty quickly, but just kept it to themselves. Maybe following a speech from Dave regarding team unity or something like that ;-)

Thank you for reading!

Amalgam000