Archive of Our Own

Aaron rarely gets coffee. In fact, most of the time, he’s in such a rush in the morning that he nearly forgets to wear his work shoes, sometimes walking outside in slippers before quickly catching the detail. When he shows up in the office, however, he is pristine and serious. It’s a good thing he irons all his suits after work, whenever he has time, so he never really runs out of non-wrinkly clothes to wear.

When he does get coffee, he grabs two. One for himself, black and bitter to wake him up, and another with two sugars and one creamer. He quickly thanks the worker, taking the handle of the cardboard carrier that held the two drinks. The bitter wind nips at his face as he wrestles with his coat, fumbling for his keys before getting seated.

The drive to the office is steady, there’s light traffic, but it’s to be expected in Virginia. When he checks the time though, he realizes he’s actually a bit earlier than usual. A whole minute early.

The office is as busy as it usually is. He sees JJ walking around with an air of business, carrying papers in her hands as she hands the files to Reid. Morgan’s talking on the phone, a mischievous smile on his face, which makes Aaron think that he’s talking to Garcia about something not-so-productive. Aaron scans the room for a familiar head of brown hair, glancing around her usual spots: Reid’s and Morgan’s desks, the conference room maybe, through the blinds of Gideon’s office, by JJ’s side, and lastly at her desk that she barely sits in — except he doesn’t find her.

Instead, at her desk is someone with black hair, straight black hair, who sits with perfect posture. The desk is ordered in a way that is no longer familiar, the phone placed at the left instead of the right, her black warm-light lamp missing, replaced with a white-lighted one. The desk is organized, files stashed away in cabinets instead of being all over the desk. There’s no post-it notes placed randomly on the clear dividers to remind her of menial tasks she always forgets to do, nor is there that familiar white cup she liked to keep in the corner of her desk, a gift from Reid.

It’s not her desk anymore, a small voice chides him.

Perhaps Prentiss feels his gaze, because she looks up and blinks at him, her hand raising into a wave with a brief moment of hesitation.

And he freezes, the grip on the cardboard handle carrying the cups of coffee tightening as it cuts into his hand. The weight of it suddenly feels heavy, far heavier than it was just a few seconds ago, and his stomach drops to his feet. He looks away, ignoring how her hand slowly sinks as she watches him climb the steps to his office.

Even when he finishes his own cup, the two sugars, one creamer coffee sits on his desk until the end of the day, untouched and cold.

(He hesitates, his hand over the open trash-can, before he throws it away. He thinks he hears it spill as the lid opens in the trash bag.)

The crime scene looks gruesome, although it’s nothing in comparison to the others he’s seen before. In fact, the blood pool on the floor hardly fazes him. He looks around the room, at the shelf containing the victim’s china plates. According to the police, they haven’t touched anything since they came in, other than removing the body, having only taken photos and labeling the evidence before the BAU arrived.

He notices the door of the clear shelf in front of is wide open, the top shelf still full with precious china, but the middle shelves are cleaned out. The stands are still there but empty and the bottom shelf china is laying in pieces on the floor below. There's a yellow, numerical sign next to it, indicating it as a piece of evidence. The table beside the shelf is set for dinner, with less precious plates on the table, napkins set next to them with cutlery set on top. It remained untouched, it seemed, as the unsub ransacked the house.

The police had told him, before he entered, that they believed that it was a common robbery, especially with the open drawers, messy closets, but his instinct told him otherwise, mostly because of the overkill on the victim. The body had around 15 stab wounds, which would indicate a sexual motive, or even an emotional crime. Those wounds were not typical of a simple robbery. In his own, very humble, opinion, he believed that a robbery was only staged as an aftermath type of thought. Not as the main motive.

Aaron’s eyes drift over the rest of the room: over the couch with the blood splatters on its cushions, the white blanket laying atop of it with an edge that was beginning to turn reddish-brown from the blood that was climbing up on it, over to the opened windows that indicated the entrance point. He notes the dark, dirt-streaked footprint on the white fabric of the sofa, the prints visible but faded. There’s no distinct pattern to it. Perhaps the unsub had brushed at it in order for it not to be recognizable.

He walks carefully across the room, kneeling near the bodiless blood pool. It’s seeped into the carpet, probably into the wooden floorboards underneath it too. In his experience, he’s been beside worse cases, more spine-chilling crime scenes, so he’s not too phased by the stench of death right beside him.

The drapes on the window drift into the living room as the wind blows west, the eerie white translucency of the fabric reminding him of a ghostly film. He’s slightly amused at the thought, turning to say it to Elle, who would be by his side, knelt opposite of the couch which is on his right. He wonders if she’d think of it as morbid, saying it in a crime scene of a dead body, or if she would have thought the same thing. He thinks she’d give him a slight smile, pretending like it wasn’t funny to her, because she’s used to his dark sense of joking.

The place beside him is decidedly and unfamiliarly empty when he turns his head.

And suddenly, his stomach turns as he remembers the walls covered in Elle’s blood, the word “RULES” written out in messy writing, the smell of blood all over the room and the sickening thought of her body laying there. The house is suddenly too quiet, too similar, too closed in. The blood is too much, too dizzying and sitting here without her only makes it worse.

Aaron sets his jaw, standing and combing through the house again for anything he might have missed.

(Gideon asks later if he’s okay. He simply answers, ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’)

His team is in the conference room as per usual. Business is conducted as it normally does: JJ comes in with a new case, set on the table with papers, photos, evidence and more scattered across for all the members to see. She previews them on the main details, letting Gideon take the lead when it comes to the specifics.

It feels routine, just like normal. They review the case, they fly out and he’s out the door first. On the plane, he looks over the files more carefully, filing things as he likes it. Chronologically ordered victims first, then his notes on their wounds, possible motives, possible background of the unsub from the wounds, choice of weapon, or otherwise. It’s simple, it feels automatic.

The scene of the crime, investigating, looking around and interviewing. It’s standard protocol and Aaron is somewhat glad that some semblance of his life is returning. The familiar bustle of urgency and logical thinking makes him feel sane, almost.

The team sits around a round-table and goes through the facts again. There’s little information and not enough time. Aaron looks at the clock ticking on the wall. Five more hours.

“We need a division of labor.” He announces, quickly assigning roles to each of the members of the team. He would see everyone the victim knew with Elle, Gideon with Morgan at the crime scene, Reid here at the station monitoring the calls with JJ and Garcia. As soon as the words leave his mouth, he grabs his jacket to leave when Reid clears his throat.

“Uhm, Hotch?” He asks, almost hesitantly. Aaron pauses, looking at him.

“Yes?”

“You said Elle.”

“I’m sorry?”

Reid glances at Prentiss before looking away. “Uhm, you said you and Elle would go interview the victim’s friends and family?”

Aaron looks around at the team, who are pointedly avoiding eye contact with him. Everyone except Gideon, who is only watching Aaron’s face. Prentiss looks especially awkward. He blinks, thinking.

“Did I?” He responds, more as a rhetorical statement and less as a question. As if he didn’t know he had even uttered her name in the first place. (Because he didn’t. It was instinct almost, to investigate with her. It was habit.)

Morgan answers anyways, his lips pressed together as he stares at the table with a nod. “Yup.”

“...My mistake then.” He takes a breath. “Prentiss. Let’s go interview them.” Aaron nods at her, not really looking her in the face, but just in her general direction before he walks out the office, not bothering to check if she was following. There’s a stir of rustling behind him as he walks out. He does not look back.

(He doesn’t know why he said her name. They say that the unconscious holds all your deepest desires, but Aaron doesn’t want to think about that.)

On rare days when the team is able to enjoy themselves, he finds himself sitting with them at their desks, instead of his office. Aaron’s sitting on Spencer’s desk while the latter is in his chair. They’re facing Morgan’s desk, as the man spins in his chair, gesturing with his hands as he talks to them. Garcia and JJ are standing around his desk, laughing at his outrageous story that cannot be true, at least by Spencer’s standards. It’s comfortable, familiar. He likes the simplicity.

Prentiss comes by, joining the conversation. She sits beside Aaron and he scoots over to make room for her. Lately, Aaron thinks he’s been getting used to her presence. She tunes into Morgan’s extravagant adventure, detailing how he had saved a family of poor cats that were stuck in a high tree, how he himself single handedly rescued them with the help of only one other neighbor. Spencer makes an affronted noise.

They fall into a loud banter, something Aaron finds comforting. It feels normal. Prentiss by his side nudges him and he turns to look at her.

“Children, am I right?” She says with a grin. Aaron gives a huff of his breath, of something similar to amusement.

“You aren’t much older than them.” He answers. “Although you are absolutely right about that.”

“Sometimes it feels like babysitting.” She laughs, watching as Spencer goes into another one of his rants about how it is definitely impossible that Morgan climbed a tree when he was so sure he was afraid of heights.

At Garcia and JJ’s laugh, Morgan looks offended. “I am not afraid of heights.”

Prentiss sighs, amused, and gets up from the table, brushing past Aaron by coincidence. He thinks he smells vanilla, probably from a perfume she’s using. It’s not unusual for her to have some sort of sweet scent, usually it’s strawberries or some kind of fruity citrus, but vanilla reminds him vaguely of brown hair and brown eyes and suddenly he’s not sitting with his new team but with Elle in a dark room where a bomb goes off behind them, somewhere down those walls.

Her back is pressed against him as he holds her close, afraid that maybe the blast would be strong enough to break through the hallway and hurt the two of them. If he’s closer to it, maybe he could protect her better. Or maybe he’s just rationalizing how he pulls her towards him against the wall, instead of running away like the other agents. They stand there in that moment, with the loud blast of the materials in the room being broken down, the glass shattering, the door breaking down at its hinges.

She’s close enough that he smells the vanilla, even through all the ash and burning scent behind them. The fire is hot behind them but he can barely focus on it when all he hears is his heart beating so loud that he thinks maybe the building is rumbling in tempo with it. His breathing is harsh, even in his own ears. When she leans against him, he feels safer than if he were to stand alone.

Even when they think the coast is clear, they linger a bit beside each other. Their chest rises and falls together, still out of breath from the rush of the explosion (or maybe something else that Aaron refuses to name) before Gideon’s voice calls from the earpiece again.

“—otch. Hotch.” His voice seems to say.

But it’s not his voice.

“Hotch!” Morgan calls him, snapping his fingers. “You good?”

Aaron blinks, returning to reality. “Sorry?”

“Kinda lost you there.” Reid adds on, looking at him with a worried glance. “JJ just got a call. Said we have a new case.”

“Right.” He stands from the desk, shaking his head a bit in an attempt to clear his head. “Let’s go to the conference room.”

(Aaron knows he needs to get a grip on himself. The problem is, it’s quite difficult when everything reminds him of her.)

Aaron rarely falls asleep on the plane these days. In fact, whenever he can, he tries to avoid it. Tries to feel more productive doing things such as looking over case reports or reading up on past cases that could help him think in a new angle. He hates wasting time, that’s the thing. There’s always something that he needs to be doing. Something he can do with his hands, his brain, his thoughts. Avoiding thinking about distractions.

A certain distraction.

So when he does fall asleep, he dreams. He doesn’t really know what to make of it, and in hindsight he should’ve known he would have dreamed about the last thing he was thinking about.

He’s standing in a bar, he thinks. The place is dimly lit, there’s people everywhere, and he’s sitting at a table drinking god knows what. Haley’s beside him, he knows; he sees the blonde hair in his peripheral vision.

His dream-self smiles at her, as she grabs his arm to throw it around her shoulder. She leans against him and he feels her warmth by his side. For a moment he feels content, more relaxed than he’s been for the past month. They sit there quietly, just watching everyone walk by in a blur. He thinks he sees Morgan and Reid in the back, but it’s too difficult to tell.

Well, his mind isn’t really paying attention to them in the first place.

He notices he’s still in his work clothes. His tie and button-up is still there, although a bit rumpled, but his jacket is around her shoulders. He sees her hair, dark against the navy blue.

She tilts her head so that her lips are by his ear and he leans closer to hear her in the loud bar.

“Do you miss me?”

Aaron squints in confusion. “What?”

“Do you miss me?” She repeats. He pulls back, looking at her, and instead of blonde he sees brunette. Her hair’s short, like the last time he saw her, and she’s looking at him like she’s staring into his soul. Like she always is. Like she knows what he’s thinking — those traitorous thoughts.

“Hotch?” She says his name like it’s the most natural thing to do, her hand on his forearm, warm and almost burning and he almost responds, her name is on the tip of his tongue before he’s suddenly ripped away from his dream from a jolt of the jet.

Aaron wakes up, squinting and tired. He has a vague feeling of confusion, maybe contentment, his heart pounding and his head stuffed with cotton. Then it clears, that blurriness, and he realizes he’s still on the plane. Spencer’s sitting on the other end of the couch, a finger running down the page of his book before quickly flipping to the next one.

He sits up, squeezing his eyes together. They burn in a way that he knows means he is sleep deprived. He has been avoiding it lately.

Spencer looks up at him, hearing him shift on the couch.

“Why didn’t you wake me up, Reid?” Aaron asks, sitting up.

“Didn’t want to. You haven’t slept in a while,” comes his response. “Sleep deprivation can cause a variety of side effects which include worsened memory, slowed thinking, a lack of energy and poor decision making–”

“Alright, I get it.” He holds a hand up to stop his statistical rant. He runs a hand through his hair, sighing. His heart is pounding for some reason after his nap. He vaguely thinks he had a dream, but he doesn’t know about what.

Well, maybe he does. Afterall, the lingering feeling of yearning is something he’s come to be familiar with in the past few months.

Spencer watches him for a moment. “Hotch, are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Aaron exhales, “Why are you asking?”

“Well, I thought I heard you say ‘Elle’ when you woke up.”

Aaron freezes before slowly looking at him. Spencer’s still watching him, his book left open on his lap, abandoned. His eyes are filled with nothing but worry, maybe a tinge of understanding, and that makes him want to avoid the subject altogether.

He knows why he hates sleeping on the plane. He loses control over his thoughts, his actions. He’s no longer distracted and she runs through his head like a broken record: of all their past memories, of the things he didn’t do, or didn’t say. It’s true that you can figure out someone based not just on what they do, but also on what they don’t do.

He didn’t say it to her face, the last time he saw her. He said it under his breath, where only he could hear himself. “I’ll miss you too.”

He didn’t hug her, he sat decidedly in his chair. He didn’t tell her to stay, he didn’t tell her anything he’s been thinking since the first day they met, he didn’t tell her that maybe, just maybe, he was in love with her and maybe still is, he didn't tell her that he thinks of her everytime he walks into the office, or the conference room, or the plane, or on a new case. He didn't tell her anything, even when the contact in his phone remained untouched, their chat opened and keyboard waiting, because he’s a coward at heart.

They’d put that on his headstone. Aaron Hotcher, the coward.

“Maybe you heard wrong,” he says, getting up to go to the restroom on the jet.

“You’ve been saying her name a lot lately.” Spencer says to him. Aaron pauses, swallowing hard. “Elle’s,” he clarifies, as if he needs any. He knows who he’s talking about instantly.

It’s a moment where Aaron just stands there in the aisle, his back facing Reid, before the latter speaks up again.

“You know, I miss her too.” He speaks quietly, probably playing with his fingers like he always does, wringing his hands in his lap. If Aaron turns around now, he’d probably no longer be looking at his back. He does turn, slowly, and stares down at Spencer; he’s right.

“I know.” He answers back, with a soft sigh. “I know, Spencer.”

(He thinks he feels Spencer’s eyes staring at him from the other side of the couch, burning a hole in his face. He ignores it. He’s been ignoring a lot of things lately.

Other than the gaze, he’s also ignoring how Elle used to sit there after a long day with him, just talking about nonsensical things, irrelevant to the case but important to the both of them anyways. Those small conversations always made the hard case better. The Google search, ‘how to stop dreaming about someone you miss’ yields no advice and no answers.)

The bell jingles above him as he enters. His daily morning coffee has really not helped his caffeine addiction, but at some point he’s grown not to care. It keeps him awake. More focused. If he tries hard enough he pretends that it’s coffee that she got him—no. He cuts the thought off.

“Hi! The usual?” The cashier in front of him is often taking the shifts when he usually comes in. The fact that he even has a “usual” shows how much he comes to this store.

“Yes, the black coffee and—” he pauses with a frown. “Actually, just one. The black coffee is good.”

“Alright sir!”

They punch in his order and he pays with a swipe of his card. He ignores how wrong it feels to order just for himself. When he walks into the office, he ignores how wrong it feels not to be carrying the cardboard box holding two cups, instead feeling the burning heat from his cup in his palms.

He learns not to look at her desk when he walks by, walking straight to the stairs up his office. If anyone notices how he no longer greets them as he walks by, they don’t comment on it. Perhaps they see it on his face, that determination, to ignore the fact that she’s no longer in the office with them.

When they get on field, he no longer anticipates her presence beside him. He stops turning to expect her next to him. He gets Prentiss’s name right when he assigns tasks to the team and they stop expecting him to correct himself when he nearly says her name.

Prentiss stops wearing vanilla. He doesn’t know if she noticed, but she’s stopped, and that’s all he really cares about.

He stops dreaming about her. Slowly. She shows up sometimes, though he no longer whispers her name when he wakes up, her name on the tip on his tongue. He wakes up feeling tired when it happens. Mostly because he knows he can’t control that. He knows that unconscious feeling is still there, hiding. Waiting.

Today, he humors it, that feeling of missing something. It leads him to the graveyard, the one where she was when he followed her. He hadn’t even realized that he was there until the car stopped, as if he was just following his instinct.

The car stills and he steps out of it, slamming the car door shut. He remembers where she was standing before, like a memory burned into his head. Walking to that spot feels like a walk of shame, of things he never said, of things he was thinking before, when he was doing this the first time.

The tombstone is something personal, something that isn’t for him. But he feels as if he should say something anyways. Afterall, it’s a little disrespectful to come all this way, thinking about Robert Greenaway’s daughter all the time, without saying anything. So he does.

He speaks under his breath mostly. Quietly, so that only he could hear. He speaks about how he misses her in general. Her presence. He talks about all his mistakes at the bureau, just because of how used he is to her being there. He talks about her coffee order, the small things he’s noticed like her nails, how she picks at her fingers, how she gets that look when she’s no longer listening to him.

He talks about how she’s stubborn, how she doesn’t like telling people when she’s hurt. How he’s learned to notice her winces, how she limps, her tells when she’s lying (though he still lets her get away with most of them). Aaron speaks about how she used to notice when he’d switch ties, or when he was feeling particularly fancy and wore a tie pin or clip alongside his outfit.

Maybe it’s the atmosphere, how it makes him reminisce. He doesn’t know why, but it just keeps pouring out of him, like a river that broke through a dam. He’s been holding it back for so long that it feels like a relief to let it out. To just talk to someone, even if they’re not physically there. He thinks that saying everything that he never could have said to anyone else is healing. He thinks he could be getting over her absence.

He thinks his coffee’s getting cold in his car.

He says his last words, his thanks and his goodbyes, before he turns around. He’s not even two steps towards his car when he hears the crunch of leaves from his far left.

First he sees flowers, a small bouquet. He thinks he sees some white lilies and something blue peaking through. Then he sees brown hair. It’s longer than he remembers it to be.

His heart seizes.

“Hotch?”

And again he falls.