Title: The Seventh Grader
By: dancerindisguise
Pairing: Prentiss/Hotch
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Not mine. Don't have to rub it in!
Summary: For a veteran profiler, Aaron Hotchner honestly has no clue.

***

They're in a smoky bar. It's just past peak, so the crowd is thinning out, but she can still hear the distant fragments of other conversations. This bar is the very one she, JJ and Garcia met Brad-the-real-FBI-agent in. She smiles at the memory, remembering how they never saw him ever again at the bar. Remembering how even though it was absolutely hilarious how he'd scampered off after they showed him their badges, she'd felt so sorry for him. She wonders how he knows this bar. "Penny for your thoughts?" and her mind whirls.

"Sure you have enough cash for that?" She grins, running her finger over the rim of her beer.

He shrugs. "I'll take my chances."

Her smile is subdued now, while she assimilates what to reveal and what not to. "I'm enjoying myself." She nods happily, sipping at the pint. "I'm enjoying being here. With you."

She sees his lips tilt up at the corners into a little smile. "Good. I'm enjoying it too."

They sit in a comfortable silence for awhile, and his hand suddenly reaches out and grabs hers where it lies drumming the table. His gaze affixed on the ten o' clock news, which is reporting on Hurricane Ike, he refuses to meet her eye. She smiles – so maybe she's not the only one feeling it, and squeezes his hand carefully. He glances over and smiles briefly, before turning his gaze back onto the weatherwoman. "Think it'll be strong?" he murmurs quietly – almost soft enough for her not to hear him –, settling back into his chair. Their hands swing between them now, dangling freely in the space between their seats.

She wonders if he means the hurricane, or them. "Maybe. Could get weaker, though." He nods silently, and turns back to the weather report. They sit quietly for awhile, while she gathers up the nerve to talk. "This is the same bar we met Brad at," she tells him fondly.

"Brad?" his head turns, his gaze now fixed firmly on her.

She smiles, recognising his behaviour. "Brad, a real FBI agent."

His eyebrows raise. She smirks. "Yep."

"Do I know him?"

She shakes her head and laughs. "Nope, and I hope you never do. You'd arrest him, most likely, on some superfluous charge, for trying to hit on me. You look like you would." She has a fleeting sense of surprise at her ability to tease him, for he begins to turn red.

"You know what, Hotch?" she asks with a squeeze of his hand. "You're a lot more real than Brad." He smiles, one of his rare full-blown smiles, and she has to laugh, because he's acting like a seventh grader.