Title: Complimentary
Authour: prettychemistry
Rating: T
Pairing: Reid/Prentiss
Words: ~300
Disclaimer: No ownership of them... sadly.
Summary: Emily dressing up to meet Viper seemed awfully lopsided to me. So I wrote this little scene. Okay, blatant excuse for kissing, I admit it.

***

Emily is getting bored, waiting for Jordan to finish getting ready, when Reid finds her standing in the hall outside the locker room.

"Wow, I - I like your dress," he tells her, his smile awkward but sincere.

She smiles back, slightly sheepish. Still, it's not every day a man compliments her out of the blue. "Thank you. It's not something I would usually wear to hang out at police stations, it seems like a waste, but Jordan's busy changing."

"I think it will be wasted on Viper too." Reid rolls his eyes. "It seems absurd for a woman like you to get dressed up to see him."

She laughs. He's standing closer to her than he otherwise might. "So what kind of woman am I?"

"Beautiful," he says sweetly, brushing her hair back off her face with a gentle hand. "Brave, brilliant..." They're alone in the hallway. She has absolutely no idea how she should respond. Then, "...the best kind I can think of, actually," he murmurs. He tilts her face up and kisses her, slow and easy, not at all like she would have predicted. But then, she would never have guessed that she would be clutching the sleeve of his shirt, pulling him closer, inviting his tongue into her mouth, so maybe this time she had the profile dead wrong.

He pulls away first, and rubs the pad of his thumb at the corner of her mouth, where her lipstick has smeared a little. He gives her a twinkly-eyed smile. She doesn't know how she utterly failed to see this coming. He tasted like bad police station coffee and she can't stop staring at his lips.

"What was that for?" she breathes.

"So you won't have wasted your dress," he replies, as matter-of-fact as ever.

She touches a fingertip to her lips as she watches him walk away, and thinks that, no, it wasn't wasted at all.

***