Hotchniss Challange: Sad/Whump OTP

2. "Why Did You Choose Me?"

 "Why, darling, I don't live at all when I'm not with you."
-Ernest Hemingway

Shirts were stripped the moment their feet hit the carpet of his apartment. His pants fell in a tangle of their three feet from the door. Her's made hasty descent by the edge of the sofa. The only thing, there were no hot kisses or fumbling fingers. 

"I like being the big spoon," nope, there were no nocturnal experiments. Just too two people eager to fall into bed and sleep. Even if it meant dirty bed sheets tangling at their toes and goosebump flesh because neither was strong enough to get up and turn off the air conditioner.

He grunts in reply, stretching his left leg out and getting a satisfying crack out of his knee.

She slaps his exposed ribs," don't do that. It's bad for your joints... and it sounds awful."

The pillow muffles his sigh, so he opens his right eye and peers at her. "Being the big spoon really goes straight to your head." Which is true because every time she catches him too tired to fight off her advances, she smugly makes the choice to be the big spoon. And the next thing he knows he's got her arm draped over his ribs, her legs coming up behind him, and her toes poking his flesh. 

She gratifies him with no response and instead walks a hand down his ribs to take his hand. She moves up the bed, making it so that she still be the big spoon but so that she can also hold and see his hand. Once she's settled again, leaning now into the back of his head, she plays with his fingers. 

She takes interest in the small scar in the meat of the space between his forefinger and pointer. It's his right hand, his shooting hand, so she suspects it to be from holding his hand too close to the hammer of the gun. Something a rookie would do.

Choosing to rest, she interlaces their hands and moves into a comfortable position. They lay in one another silence, she focuses on his breathing. The way it begins to change as he drifts closer and closer to sleep. 

She loves him.

She runs her finger over his thumb, kissing the exposed flesh that his t-shirt hasn't covered. 

She loves him in a terrible way.

She moves her hand up his arm, releasing his hand from hers and tracing her fingers up, up, up until she finds the raised skin of an old injury.

She loves him so bad that she's certain that if she loved him more than it would kill her.

Another rookie kind of injury. It's from his time during which he worked with SWAT. She recalls this wound because it should have killed him. It would have killed him but he just happened to be a better marksman that the man he was shooting against. He shot the other man's hand and made him miss, effectively leaving behind only a graze. 

She loves him with every fiber of her being but to what extent does he love her.

"Why did you chose me?" She sounds needy and she hates herself for it but she can't take it back because he's rolling over. Rolling and snuggling into her side, making their big spoon/little spoon now more of a half spoon as he rests his head on her shoulder.

In a gruff voice, laden and slow from the slumber he was so close to having, he replies," you know very well why Emily."

Except, she doesn't. She can't for the life of her understand he chose her. Why someone like him would want someone like her. Sure, they appeal to the outside world. Their dark hair and decent genetics make anyone walking on the streets think they're a happy couple but he's... He can be dark and twisty and all of the dark and twisty men on TV always want the happy blondes. And there is not a thing about her that is blond or even that happy.

"You're... fierce and loving." His voice breaks through her thoughts," because you cry at the ending of the Notebook like you haven't seen it a thousand times." He smiles, even with his face half mashed into her stomach. "You endnotes with P.S. I love you," a chuckle escapes his mouth, shaking the bed with his throaty laughter. "You say things like I love you most ardently because you think I didn't pay attention during Pride and Prejudice. That you get cold when it's 71 degrees out." He turns his head up," because you cry during comedy movies." 

Pulling his body up slowly, leaning on one elbow, he kisses her. Deep and meaningful. "I chose you the way most people dream. Slow," he leans in, taking her lips against his own, "madly," he kisses her again, using his hand to keep her from losing his gaze," and deeply."

She kisses him back, holding his head close to hers. For once, she doesn't mind feeling his hot breath against her skin. "I know you did math club, drama club, and boy scouts but my, my Agent Hotchner I didn't know you wrote sappy poetry in your spare time."

He puffs and lays back down on the bed, leaving her hot and flushed.

"Hey," she swats down at him," I didn't say that it was the hottest thing I've ever heard now did I?" She grabs the hem of his shirt and tugs him back up," because it was the hottest thing that anyone has ever said to me."

He smirks and leans into her neck, nipping at the flesh she exposes. "Was it now?"

"Oh, God yes." 

He's not entirely sure what it is she's talking about but he has half a thought that he doesn't give a damn.

She certainly doesn't.

"Love is a word, what matters is the connection that word implies."

-The matrix

Well, there's another chapter... I apologize for it taking so long

-S.H.