Balancing coffee trays in both hands, Cecile pushed the door to the station open for Morgan as he carried a stack of pizzas in his arms. As they made it through the main section of the police station, she then pushed the door to a side room with her back to help him gain entry. 'I'm just saying that you should give it some consideration. It helps strengthen your core, good for mental health, and you can take someone on a romantic ride before going for another kind of romantic ride,' Cecile remarked as they walked through the door. Pausing to look at Hotch who had taken off his jacket after an incident at the stables the victim was found in.
The silent pause was not noticed by the team as they excitedly began eating. Hotch, however, silently anticipated the comment she was about to make, like she had done in recent days. 'Nice ass, Pooh Bear,' she remarked with a wink before she started handing out their drinks.
Hotch's glare was growing more intense as he watched her walk around the room without a care in the world. However, his intense stare softened as she glanced at him and smirked, knowing how she had riled him up. Before she could see how much her smile had removed the scowl from his face, he turned back to the board he was writing on. 'Horses aren't my thing. They smell, and they are unpredictable,' Morgan replied between bites.
'But horses are so cute,' Garcia chimed down the line while eating her own food. 'And they can have their own names which can be anything. Like Snickerdoodle,' she added excitedly.
Prentiss smiled as she glanced at the file in front of her while trying not to think about the dead bodies as the pepperoni slid down her throat. 'It's still a cool skill to have. I wish I was a horse girl growing up,' she blabbed while taking another bite.
JJ quietly nodded as she stuffed her face after not eating any breakfast that day. 'Horses are cool, but I would need someone who mucks them too,' she admitted.
Getting bored, and an idea simultaneously, Cecile stood while rolling a piece of pizza like she always did so that she could eat it without touching it with her hands, when she picked yet another piece up and folded it in the same way. Hotch, on the other side of the room had his back to the team as his right hand clutched the board to keep it from wobbling while his left hand wrote up notes they had made.
Just as Hotch pulled the pen away in thought, Cecile took her chance and slipped in the small gap between his body and the board. His dark eyes zoned in on her playful brown ones as he watched her slowly chew the pizza piece within inches of his face. Slowly, one of her hands lifted as she offered her second pizza slice to him, silently challenging him to eat and play her game. Considering his choices, lectures, passive aggression and the silent treatment had failed in recent weeks. It was at that moment that Hotch decided to play along.
Dipping his head for a moment, Hotch lowered his mouth onto the rolled pizza, surprising Cecile as he met her eye and his lips gently brushed her fingers before he took the piece and began eating it. Seeming to struggle as she had made it look so easy, Hotch was fighting to eat the pizza without moving either of his hands and pushing it further in.
Sighing out, Cecile pushed her pointer finger against the end of the roll to help him, which he was silently grateful for. 'Fitness Friends is a position where person one lays on their side, person two gets on their knees then lifts person one's leg over their shoulder, allowing them to straddle person one's leg on the ground and penetration occurs as their person one's leg is over person two's shoulder,' she informed him quietly, making him choke at the sudden news. Hotch had hoped she would stop doing that, informing him of sexual positions at random times.
With her finger still on the pizza, Hotch didn't drop the slice as he regrouped and then continued eating. 'Sallow,' Reid called, making her pop her head out and appear between Hotch's torso and his raised arm. 'Did you not get yourself a coffee?' He asked curiously.
'Oh, no,' Cecile began, pausing for a moment as Hotch's lips met her finger but didn't stop. His teeth gently biting on her knuckle as his tongue ran circles around her digit. 'I did buy myself a coffee, but I drank half of it, and then spilt it when we stepped out of the pizza place,' she confessed while suppressing a smirk.
Hiding behind Hotch's body again, she met his eye with a silent challenge when he suddenly began gently sucking on her finger. However, she soon pulled her hand away from him and grimaced at her finger. 'You were asking for it,' he murmured while adding to the notes again, moving an inch closer to her.
'I don't mind you playing me like that, Big Boy, but you just ate pizza. I have your food remnants on my finger now. That's so gross. It's worse than touching soggy food in the sink,' Cecile complained.
Leaning across her, Hotch placed the pen on a ledge before finishing the remnants of his glass of water. As he moved, her finger pushed against his tie to remove the particles of food that she knew were there, even if she couldn't see them. However, as she wiped it off and checked it in the light, Hotch gently bit it again and he gently ran his tongue against the pad of her finger, until he increased the pressure against her finger. Eventually, he seemed to give in as he let her finger go while he was writing notes again. Despite all of his actions, he still remained on target as he wrote notes.
About to wipe her finger again, Hotch stopped her, nearly drawing on his shirt as the pen was almost forgotten as he took her finger and shoved it into her own mouth. Refusing to let him see her reaction, Cecile appeared stoic, however, her heart raced with anger as she tried to think up a revenge plan. 'That's not how this works, Hotchner,' she teased while wiping her finger against the underside of his tie, avoiding the potential recontamination of her finger.
'Are you saying that this is no fun when I play your game? That is unfortunate,' he replied without looking away from the board.
Glaring and ducking out from the gap she squeezed herself in, Cecile joined the team who were only occasionally glancing at the exchange. 'So, that seemed intimate. But you don't look very happy. What happened?' Prentiss asked curiously as she scooted her chair closer to Cecile.
'I was bested by him. For the first time since working here, I lost. And he won,' Cecile seethed quietly. 'Son of a bitch,' she murmured slightly louder.
'Language,' Hotch called over his shoulder.
Smirking, Cecile tried to return to her former glory. 'Thanks,' she retorted casually.
Confused, Hotch was left silent as he failed to understand her comment when the conversation in the room shifted to something that Cecile engaged in. 'It's my guilty pleasure,' Rossi remarked with a suave smile.
'All pleasures are guilty if you're anxious enough,' Cecile remarked while stealing Hotch's coffee and drinking it, smacking her tongue against the roof of her mouth as the bitter flavour sent her senses into over drive and one of her eyes twitched along with her shoulder.
'Are you having a stroke?' JJ asked curiously as she watched the dramatic reaction that Cecile had no control over.
'No, please continue,' Cecile squeezed out breathlessly as she moved back in for another gulp of coffee that elicited the same reaction as before, as her body began to slightly spasm.
Their conversation carried on as Cecile fought through the abomination of a drink in her hands as tears began to well. '-and sleep is so unique, it's estimated that around twelve percent of people actually dream in black and white. But did you know that a third of the average human's life is spent sleeping?' Reid informed them as he droned on for a while.
'But did you know that the past tense of sleep is sloop?' Cecile asked after nearly twenty minutes of her silent drink break.
'It really isn't,' Rossi muttered flatly.
Clearing her throat as a tear finally fell down her cheek, Cecile took in a deep sniff when a rough hand stole the cup from her and grazed her fingers. Hotch lifted the lid and saw his practically empty cup before he roughly placed it on the table and glared down at her. 'You need therapy,' Hotch mumbled while taking a seat beside her.
'Therapy isn't enough. I need to rip my ovaries out with my bare hands and cut it into chunks before feeding it to the young squirrels who feast in my garden,' Cecile blurted as the caffeine flooded her system.
Silence ensued as the team watched her eyes physically widen. 'We should probably get back to the case,' Morgan suggested hesitantly.
'You know, Rossi, I might be European, but I don't have any Italian in me, want to change that?' Cecile asked before biting her lip and quirking a brow at him.
'I don't appreciate being pulled into your game with Aaron, though I now understand how fun it may be for the two of you to do this,' Rossi replied as he stood. 'Please, I am begging to be told where to go. And do not turn this against me, Sallow,' he warned.
Nodding, the team smirked while looking at Hotch who sized up his options before him. 'Prentiss and Dave, I want you to go to the last crime scene and look into our belief that the UnSub had been there before. JJ and Morgan, you can present the press conference. Do it for the crowd of journalists who are stationed outside the local church where our fourth victim was found. Reid, you can get started on the records in the same church. JJ and Morgan will join you once they're done. I'll stay back and work on the evidence here, we still can't accurately pinpoint details yet,' Hotch listed.
'Where am I going?' Cecile asked as everyone else was leaving.
The agents cleared their throats of the laughter emerging as they watched her spin in the desk chair. 'Nowhere, you are going to sit here and work with me,' Hotch explained curtly as his hand reached out and stopped her from spinning.
Alone in the room, next to no officers sat out as Cecile began looking over the details of the case again. 'Why do you call him Dave, and me Sallow?' She asked curiously.
Not wanting to offend, Hotch considered his words for a long while. 'Because we are more equally viewed by the FBI. I am your superior, he is more my equal in our team. He also trained me to be who I am,' he replied evenly.
'So, you see yourself as superior to me, and Rossi is shit at teaching,' Cecile rambled without looking up from her file, her chest filling with the similar warmth it always did when she knew he was looking at her with an exasperated expression.
'Language, and Cecile is tougher to say than Sallow. It just doesn't roll off the tongue the same,' Hotch tried to tease back.
Quiet for a moment, Cecile read as she tried to focus again, her response came without thought. 'When I'm not at work, everyone calls me CeCe,' Cecile confessed.
'You're really good at not doing that,' Hotch mumbled in response.
'What do you mean?' Cecile retorted as her cheeks flushed red at what she had just said. While it wasn't embarrassing, it wasn't something she ever intended anyone at work hearing.
'You talk a lot, you can draw the room to you, but you never talk about yourself. You flirt with everyone here because it distracts them, and when life gets too personal, or your protective shield is down, you sexualise everything around you,' Hotch replied while flicking through evidence photos.
Turning her chair to face him, Cecile sized Hotch up quietly as she thought about what he had just said. 'Don't profile me,' she snapped back before trying to turn back to the file, however, Hotch pulled her chair closer to his, her knees touching the front of his chair as his legs sat either side of her.
'Or what? Because I have more observations. You flirt and tease me the most, getting worse as time goes on because you realise that little by little, you are getting to know and like me as a person. Not only that, but you can't help but let me accidentally know things about you,' Hotch mentioned as he tilted his body forward, getting closer to her face. 'You're protecting something inside of you, it might be something you did that hurt someone else, but that's unlikely, you probably got hurt,' he continued, moving closer as Cecile's eyes scanned his whole face.
'Shut up,' she quietly seethed while sat perfectly still, letting him slowly move closer.
Smirking, Hotch carelessly looked away for a moment before looking back at her. 'You use sex as a distraction from your feelings. Dates have become more about hook-ups as your time with the team goes on as it's a way to find a comfortable release, sex is a known evil for you,' he carried on.
Eyes rimming red, Cecile grabbed his tie and pulled it down tightly as she bunched it around her fist. 'I'm warning you, before I do something you're not ready for,' she whispered angrily.
'Something tells me that it has something to do with your shoulder,' Hotch added as he watched panic and fear flicker through her eyes.
Out of reflex, Cecile pulled his tie towards her as their eyes both closed and their lips inched together, but just as their lips grazed, she pulled away and sent Hotch flying to the floor behind her as she suddenly stood and walked away. 'You had no right,' she seethed while wiping the tears from her cheek with the palm of her hand.
Undoing his tie, Hotch stood with calmness as his stomach suddenly flipped. He had intended to push her buttons to see how she would react, but curiosity and something in his chest took over as he spoke without much evidence to support his argument. 'I don't know what happened, but I hope you know that it wasn't your fault,' he remarked while retying his tie.
'You promised not to talk about it. And then you lied, what a fucking surprise, a man who won't control himself,' she murmured while trying to dry her tears quickly and reduce the red in her eyes.
'Your language is a problem,' Hotch remarked as he finished tying his tie.
'And you're a problem. You don't see me going on a holier than thou speech,' Cecile mumbled. 'Then again, I have a hole if thou will put thou in it,' she teased suddenly as she sniffed and cooled herself down.
A/N: They were 🤏close. But the game has changed, how is it going to go?