Date nights didn’t happen as often as Emily would like.
She had to admit, she was very, very nervous going into the night. Aaron had put the date night plans on her shoulders and she’d planned one that she thought was very much out of his comfort zone. If there was one thing she knew, Aaron Hotchner didn’t let go easily and what she’d decided on was one thing that required both of them to act a little silly.
She’d chosen bowling.
She pulled into his driveway breathing deeply. She had faith that he would enjoy himself, it would just be a matter of getting him to loosen up and have a good time. With her, she knew it would simply be time. The only time she’d ever seen him truly relax was around her and around Jack. Even on cases she had a way of calming him down from his most aggravated.
She shook her head in the driver’s seat. She was being stupid. Six months had passed now, their comfort level something that relationships should aspire to. It wasn’t that they didn’t have their problems, simply that they kept them out of sight and out of mind when they weren’t alone. And they’d taken to discussing things. Much to their surprise, issues they had one day would often resolve themselves by the next and those that festered, didn’t fester into anger, but into calm rationality. It was difficult for two completely rational people, people who saw terrible behaviour every day, to actually have a yelling match.
Aaron opened the door with a wide smile. Emily in casual clothing was a sight he treasured because he was usually the only one to see it. She was standing in front of him in jeans and heeled boots to be sure, wrapped in her winter coat, but he had full faith that underneath she would be stylish, functional and, the at-home addition to the mix, comfortable. “Hello,” he greeted, snatching his coat from a nearby hook.
“Hello,” she replied, stepping forward to kiss him briefly. “Shall we?”
“Lead the way.” He waited until they were in the car to ask what her plans were.
“Bowling,” she told him frankly.
He raised an eyebrow. Even for her that seemed a little out of left field. “Bowling?”
“Mmhmm,” Emily replied, pulling out of the driveway. “It’s something that we are both dismal at, it’s something that’s stupid and old school, but fun.”
“And competitive.”
A coy grin stretched across her face. Competitiveness was often what kept their relationship interesting and often what kept her on her toes. There were things Aaron would fight her on until the day they died and yet others he would barely nudge. She had a feeling this night was about to turn out so much better than her originally fatalistic thoughts had bargained for.
Captain Jason Hackshaw was not used to frantic calls from spouses of his detectives. His gang unit ran a tight ship and they all knew personal was supposed to stay at home. His officers were tough. They had to be to make it on the gang squad.
“Gibbons!” Hackshaw yelled into the throng of detectives nosying around desks. “Where’s Raghnall?”
Gibbons, a long-time veteran of the unit and the missing officer’s partner shrugged.
“Erica didn’t come in today, Boss,” he replied.
Hackshaw wrinkled his brow. “What do you mean she didn’t come in today?” Erica Raghnall never missed a day of work. The woman had more vacation time in the bank than he did and he took vacations as rarely as possible.
“Exactly as it sounds,” Gibbons returned, shrugging again. “Haven’t seen her all day. Figured she called you sick or something.”
“She’s not at home.”
The entire office stopped moving. Officers didn’t just go missing, especially those as dedicated as Erica was. But they didn’t just go missing either, did they?
They bowling alley Emily had managed to find was not the cosmic bright lights or odd colours. On the contrary, it struck him as the type of place that he frequented with his friends during their high school days. Aaron looked over at his date for the evening and the smile that was starting across her face. He arched an eyebrow when she glanced at him as she parked.
“I’m excited,” she offered in explanation. “I haven’t been bowling in absolutely ages.”
“Me either,” he admitted as they climbed out of the car.
She grinned, swinging her purse over her shoulder. “We’ll play a few games and head out for dinner, okay?”
“Sounds good,” he agreed. Bowling would give them something mundane to talk about. With Emily Prentiss, the mundane often turned to the outrageous.
Bowling was not something he would have come up with. He liked that about Emily. She thought outside of the box at every possible opportunity and nine times out of ten was rewarded in some way for her thinking. Bowling was that out-of-the-box idea in Aaron’s mind.
He went for his pocket and wallet as they stepped up to the counter. The glare she sent him as he told the person behind the counter his shoe size told him arguing with her over who was paying was going to be a moot point. He replaced his wallet and put his hands up in surrender. He’d beat her to the dinner check.
Emily virtually skipped down the carpet to their alley, excited and anxious at the same time. She knew there were two ways she could play this game. She could play as she usually did and see what happened, or she could throw a few just so Aaron could have the thrill of ‘teaching’ her. Column B was harder. Column A could become Column B involuntarily.
“6 pounds for you?” he asked, tongue in cheek as he draped his coat over a nearby chair.
“Ha ha, funny, funny,” she replied sarcastically. “Better make it an 8.”
He picked up a 15.
Emily shivered. She wasn’t aware it was possible to make something as mundane as bowling hot, but the way his arms flexed with the weight of both balls had her salivating. She was terrible. She tried to focus on getting both of their names typed into the computer to keep score, but couldn’t keep her gaze from darting up as he set them down.
Aaron put his hands on his hips as he looked at the large scorecard on the television above his head. “You don’t want to go first?”
“Age before beauty,” she teased.
“Brawn before brains.”
“Mmm, that still means you go first.”
He sent Emily a mock glare. “That wasn’t nice.”
“I’m not a nice person. Bowl.” She wanted to see how well he was going to play.
He knocked over five pins. “Apparently this isn’t going to come back to me as fast as I thought.”
Emily laughed. “You still have another shot,” she offered in encouragement.
Three pins went down.
Erica Raghnall had no idea where she was nor much of an idea of what she was wearing. What she did know was that she had a meal to make. And she had no idea how to do it. John cooked, he always had. Since the day they’d gotten married he’d all but banned her from the kitchen, swearing she’d burn water if she could. Erica hadn’t done any serious cooking since.
She had the entire kitchen at her disposal, all she had to do was cook an edible meal. But she hurt in so many places from all of the times she’d been abused. She’d tried to escape, tried using all of the skills she’d learned as an officer and hadn’t been able to get anywhere. There was not a working phone line in the house, though it looked as if she was in a nice neighbourhood, from what she could see out of the window.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Erica stiffened, then whimpered as he grabbed a handful of her hair. “I can’t cook,” she said softly.
“Why the hell not?” the man growled.
She felt tears come to her eyes. “I never learned.”
He threw her head into the edge of the counter and she felt her head spin. She put her hand to her forehead and felt wetness. Blood. When she looked up, he was wielding a frying pan.
“Please, don’t.”
“Stupid whore. How can you not know how to cook? Women have duties in the home. They cook, they clean, they raise children. And yet you go against everything you’re supposed to do to become a stupid cop. And what use are you then? Women shouldn’t be cops. They screw up and put innocent people in jail. And know what? Those people in jail commit suicide.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Erica said softly, holding her hand to her head. Blood was gushing from her forehead. She knew she should get stitches.
“Of course not. How could you?” he asked, almost pleasantly.
Erica kept her eyes on the frying pan, watching him twirl it in his hand.
“You wouldn’t know an innocent man if he came in and told you he shot an entire apartment building’s worth of people.” His blood was starting to pump in his veins. Punishment was coming next, punishment for her lack of womanly responsibility. He was ready. It was time.
“Please,” she whispered. “I need to go to the hospital.”
“You need to learn!” He brought the frying pan down once, twice, three times and her body went limp. He felt the thrill through his system of punishment. After all, it was all for his brother.
Aaron held the door open for his still-laughing date as she stepped through to the cozy yet casual bar. He rolled his eyes as she wiped tears from the corners. “I don’t understand why it’s so funny.”
“You wouldn’t,” Emily shot back as she got control of her breath again. She led the way to a table in the back, sequestered away from most of the patrons to give them a level of privacy that they always wanted. It was also her habit to take the back where she could see everything. “And being a kid really isn’t an excuse.”
“Mother said I was a cute Easter Bunny.”
“At eight years old you have the mental capacity to tell your mother she’s off her rocker.” On the way over, Aaron had told her a story about how his mother had dressed him up in a fluffy bunny suit for Easter one year. She’d been lucky to have made it alive with how hard she was laughing.
“To this day you haven’t told your mother she’s domineering, do you think I could do the same?”
Emily shook her head. “I’m pretty sure if my mother ever presented me with a fluffy bunny suit I’d throw the biggest fit of my life regardless of my mother.”
Aaron rolled his eyes, leaning against the seat of the booth. “I was eight.”
“I told you, it’s not an excuse,” she responded. “Children know their parents make them do stupid things, Aaron.”
“Your parents didn’t make you do anything silly as a kid?” Aaron asked
Emily blushed, thankful for the darker lighting. “Never anything like bunnies.”
It was an admission nonetheless and he had full intention of wringing out of her exactly what Emily Prentiss’ definition of parental ‘silliness’ was. “Turkeys then?”
“I’m not telling,” she insisted with a laugh. She had to admit, she’d hoped he would loosen up, but the extent to which he had surprised her completely. Even in public, Aaron Hotchner had a difficult time letting go. When it was just the two of them, in her apartment or at his house, there was never a problem, but in public there was an element of guardedness he kept around him. Tonight, it seemed that she had either completely put him at ease or something had changed in him.
Conversation paused while they ordered drinks and their meals. “Christopher will probably me more than willing to tell me.”
She groaned. “Please, no.”
“Probably with pictures,” Aaron continued.
Emily knew Chris had pictures. There was no way she’d let him see those pictures. “Okay, okay, okay!”she said. “It was Santa.”
Aaron arched an eyebrow.
“Every year, at Christmas, my dad used to dress me up as Santa.”
Aaron knew how close Emily was to her father, so it wasn’t exactly a leap for him to imagine that she would have allowed her father to con her into the costume for years upon years. “How?”
Emily sighed. It was still a little embarrassing to talk about. “Red hoodie with fur trim on the hood, pockets, sleeve cuffs, bottom…. Red pants, red fluffy slippers. The whole thing.”
“You must have been an adorable little Santa.”
“You’re not helping,” Emily grumbled.
“Santa is better than the Easter Bunny,” he pointed out. “There’s no ears and he never made you put pillows underneath.”
He definitely had a point.
“When did it stop?”
“When I moved out,” Emily responded. It was probably better to just rip the band aid off instead of revealing it bit by bit. “We kind of changed a lot of traditions when I moved out.”
“Understandable. Things always change when you do.”
He would know well. The past two years had been an upheaval for him and she knew it. She’d been there every step of the way, partially because she had nothing better to do, but more importantly, because there was nowhere else she wanted to be. It was sad when she thought back on it. “So I have eighteen years of it under my belt, mister. To your once. I win.”
Aaron laughed.