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Aaron Hotchner had been in love before, he’d had his fair share of dates in high school with one milkshake and two straws, he’s cared for a handful of people enough to watch over them, offer them his jacket when they looked cold. He’s even been married before, he’s loved someone deeply enough to stand up in front of everyone in both of their lives and devote himself to this person, forever. Of course, it turned out their ‘forever’ was cut short. But in any case, Aaron Hotchner swears up and down that he has been in love before, he’s experienced love before, so why does it all feel so different with you?
Looking back on all his years of dating and courtship and marriage, he sees now that those were all a more distant kind of love. Touchless. A game of push and pull with very little actual contact ever made. He had a partner, a lover, but never someone by his side. They always moved in sync, but never in tandem. That’s what’s been different with y/n, he supposes.
It wasn’t an overnight change, for Aaron Hotchner to go from a man who would reach out and hold your hand if the setting was appropriate and you seemed to really need his support. He’s always been shy in showing his affections, particularly in front of those he holds close. Maybe that was his father’s influence, always rousing at him to detach himself from his parents. Even going as far as to send him to boarding school because Aaron was too quick to seek his mother’s comfort for a boy his age. ‘For a man’ As he was so-called. He was fourteen.
In any case, Aaron’s always been all too careful with when and where he shows his affections. He can’t pinpoint exactly when or where you were able to tear down those deep-seated insecurities and shames of his, but you did it.
It all goes back to before you even asked Aaron out. That’s right, you asked him. Yet another reason his journey with you has been in stark difference to the dyssynchronous relationships he’d previously held so close, he wasn’t the only one putting himself out there. He wasn’t the only one taking steps to be closer to you, each step he took, he found that you had taken a great stride to meet him in the middle. He had never had someone match him each time he tried to deepen his relationships, let alone to have someone else taking the steps first.
But, before you asked him out and changed his way of living and loving forever, you were just a bright spark in Aaron’s dark days. You worked the reception desk at Quantico’s FBI field office, you saw the tired, dreary faces of every agent that walked in and out of the building’s doors morning and night. You took your position very seriously, offering each dreary agent a bright smile as you greet them each day. Aaron couldn’t help but notice you, like a moth to a flame, each morning after peeling himself out of his bed, he would run on autopilot, styling his hair, shaving, picking out a tie, packing himself a sandwich he probably won’t touch for lunch. It was all done without so much as a moment’s consideration, until he reached the tall doors at the front of the building. He suddenly becomes all too aware of the fact that he may have coffee breath, and his hair at the crown of his head is sticking out in every direction as he catches his reflection in the glass. He straightens his tie, smooths down the lapels of his collar and tries desperately to remember how exactly one pulls their mouth into a natural looking smile. Dear god, you make him so frazzled he even forgets how to act like a person.
All of his efforts to prepare for his fourteen foot walk to the elevator doors are never enough to stop your warm “Good Morning, Agent Hotchner!” from drawing all the air he was once capable of holding in his lungs - out of his mouth, jaw hanging slack where it once sat tightly drawn. He manages to draw in enough air for a rather strangled “g’morning.” as he presses the elevator button.
He raps his fingers against the handle of his briefcase as he eagerly awaits the metalling pang of his exit strategy arriving. He doesn’t hear you swiftly springing out of your seat and bounding around the desk over to him until he swears he can see the haze of your halo appear in the reflection of the steel doors beside him. He turns to look at you, partly in shock and partly because he really can’t help himself from stealing another look at you at every opportunity.
“Sorry, Agent. You just have, um. Here. Let me get this.” You lay a warm hand on his chest as you take his tie in your other one, using your nail to try to pick off what must be toothpaste off the sleek black fabric. Aaron feels a churning heat rising from his chest up his pulsepoint on his neck and spreading into his cheeks as attention is brought to the burning sensation of your hand against his hammering heart.
That was the first of a hundred small moments the two of you shared, in which your hands found a home against Aaron's body and his whole world became set in motion. Of course, he knew deep down that the Earth had been turning for billions of years before your soft hands barely caressed his skin and set his nerve endings on fire. Rationally, he knows that, but it’s like he’s experienced so much in his lifetime, it isn’t until your body makes contact with his own that he begins to feel the world around him.
It wasn’t long before Aaron began yearning for more of your delicate touches. He still denies to this day that he started planting feathers in his hair or roughing up his tie before setting foot into Quantico each morning. Of course he wouldn’t intentionally smudge some of his morning oatmeal on his lapel so that you would lead him by the arm behind your desk to the sink and dab it out of the fabric for him. The highly regarded, frankly, very busy SSA Aaron Hotchner would never spend time in his parked car scrubbing his rough hands over his own eyebrows, trying to get the long hairs to sit scraggly against his stern brow. That’s just preposterous. Ridiculous. As ridiculous as the way time would come grinding to a halt as you’d set your gaze on the scraggly brows in question, moving your eyes down to look into the swirling pools of chocolate and honey gazing back at you. Aaron would feel the flicker of a thousand nerves lighting up over his scalp as you brush down his angry brows with your thumbs, your other fingertips finding a home on his temples for stability.
When you finally did ask Aaron out, he was so wonderstruck your bottom lip actually darted out in a sort of tearful pout, thinking he was rejecting you or that you had embarrassed yourself and misread all of his lingering stares and increasingly radiant smiles he cast your way each morning. Thinking you had just imagined the regret in his voice each night he said goodbye, you thought he had been sad to leave you. Wanting to say so much more, but his silence now spoke for itself. You’d been wrong.
Aaron felt so frozen in his own body as his every impulse to tell you yes, YES, he would love to go out with you died in his throat, suffocated by the sheer volume of joy coursing through him. As your hand fell from the cuff of his coat you had clung to, and your eyes dart to the ground, turning your head away from him, Aaron manages to regain a skerrick of control over his own body, reaching out a hand to wrap around your bicep, turning you back to him as his cheeks warm and begin migrating towards his ears, making his beloved crows feet appear beside his glistening eyes. Yet again, he denies that there were tears at the notion of someone asking him out, of you asking him out after all this time, but you know what really happened.
“Y/N, nothing would make me happier.” Aaron’s dry mouth finally regains the ability to work normally. You seemed to now be the one standing in a daze, his hold on your clothed arm still sending the same trickles of lightning throughout your body that Aaron had felt through his own before, each time you’d held onto him.
As one date turned into many, and weeks spent together bled into months, Aaron could feel himself changing. Growing. You had come into his life and taken the wool from his eyes, showing him what a love can be like when the two of you want to foster and nurture it, carrying it between the two of you through your lives, even as it changes and evolves. The two of you aren’t carrying separate entities alone, but instead your hands are intertwined around something beautiful burning between you.
Aaron didn’t notice some of the more underlying changes in himself, he knew he could feel and see rays of sunshine warming him from within, he didn’t realize the sun was only able to find him because you had dismantled the walls he had built, that were casting him into darkness all of these years.
Aaron, however, was not the only one to notice these changes. After a rather successful third date, the two of you had planned a fourth. Sadly, a life of chasing serial killers and child abductors and otherwise scummy members of society got in the way, and Aaron had to reschedule you more than a few times before you two lovebirds finally got to go on another date. You were so excited when Friday night finally came around and Aaron had not been called on another case. You wanted desperately to run into the elevator the minute the clock struck five and pull Aaron by his coat out of the office and into the night, but sadly your coworker was running late to relieve you and take over the front desk. Luckily, Aaron was just as eager to meet you, and he felt ten squinting, profiling eyes on his back as he shut his office door at 5:02. He dropped his briefcase between his shoes to pull on his scarf and his coat before his long legs carried him, gliding down the stairs to the bullpen with a hint of a smile gracing his relaxed features.
“Hotch, I must be seeing things. Are you actually leaving this place on time for once? Is your office on fire? Did you accidentally forward your snarky email to Dave to Strauss by mistake?” Emily was the first to retort, leaning back in her seat and not trying at all to hide her amusement.
“No, everything’s fine, Strauss’ contact address in my emails is unmistakable. I learned that lesson years ago. I have some… plans tonight. Can’t be late.” Hotch offered Emily a smirk, quirking his eyebrow up towards his hairline as he ran a hand over his tie. A new tie, Morgan notes.
“Oooooooh no way. Ain’t no way my man has a date tonight! Aight, bossman. Take that fancy new tie of yours and show your friend a good time.” Derek offered a toothy grin, reaching his fist up for Hotch to bump as he breezes past, still not slowing to make conversation.
Hotch accepts Derek’s fistbump, much to the younger agent’s surprise, he expected his comments to get under Aaron’s skin more than anything. Hotch makes it a rule never to encourage prying into his personal life, but maybe he’s content enough with said personal life to allow a little prying these days.
Hotch reaches the elevators, pressing the button for Ground Floor as he offers his bewildered team a wave.
“Goodnight, agents. Please let me find this unit still in one piece on Monday. Remember to lock the doors when you leave, no parties, and no loud music after nine.” Hotch stepped into the open doors with a smile gracing his features and his team was left in what can only be described as shock.
“Okay, tell me I’m not hallucinating. Did Hotch leave this place willingly, of his own accord, on time, with a smile on his face and jokes? He’s got jokes all of a sudden?” Emily was blinking slowly as if to clear her vision, at the others who all appeared equally stunned by their boss’s sudden change of habits.
“He has been in a better mood lately, last week when Penelope kept referring to the previous case notes as ‘the tea’ Hotch made no efforts to correct her. The last time she tried referring to an unsub’s criminal record as their ‘bio’ he looked like he was going to burst a blood vessel trying to stay calm asking her not to call it that.” Spencer chimes in.
“Hold your horses, pretty boy. Go stake out the South windows in the briefing room and see if you can see our happy camper heading out the front door, I gotta go get babygirl to see this. She’ll never believe me otherwise.” Derek bounced away in a jog towards the batcave, retrieving the BAU’s most renowned gossip monger to delight in their boss’s new developments. Meanwhile JJ, Emily and Spencer moved quickly to the window in the round table room.
Derek and Penelope just made it in time, Derek pushing Penelope to take longer steps, her stilettos the only thing preventing her from sprinting to the window. The front doors of Quantico swung open, six floors down, a large arm holding them open as two heads of hair, tightly embraced, floated out of the tall doorway. The hand holding the doors is revealed to be their boss’s, holding onto his briefcase and shouldering a larger sage green bag, presumably belonging to the individual who’s seen leaning their head on Aaron’s free shoulder. His arm tightly snaked around their waist as their own arm disappeared under the shielded warmth of his long coat, wrapping around his back in a sort of walking embrace. Despite the awkward angle the team has of the couple six floors below them, they look to be talking animatedly as they walk, Penelope squeals as Aaron presses his lips to his lover’s temple leaving a warm kiss against their skin.
“How- How?! How long has this been happening? Quick. Profilers, profile! What do we know? Who is this mysterious fallen angel in our midst? Oh my god. We have to go to my lair tonight! I have to track down these star crossed lovers and see how compatible they are and oh! My god-” Garcia is cut off by her own gasp as she sees you and Aaron stop by the car, where he puts your bag in the backseat before bending down on his knee and taking your ankle in his hand, guiding your foot to his thigh where he ties your hanging shoelace. You’re still talking, your hands gesticulating wildly as you recall the events of your day to Aaron, who has long since finished tying your shoe, and is now just watching you talk, still pinned down by your foot, he doesn’t seem to mind one bit. In fact, even from six storeys up, on the opposite side of the carpark, Emily swears she can see a glimmer in her boss’s eyes as he watches his date talking. The lights on the outside of the building behind you, making you look like an angel to him as your ‘halo’ illuminates the signet of the FBI on the face of the building.
“So this is why he’s been religiously applying chapstick lately. I thought he was just becoming really sensitive to the wind.” JJ offers, Penelope jumping up and down and clapping her hands together in a silent celebration before clutching her necklace in front of her heart.
“He also changed his haircut this month. I have seen that man enter this office on the first Monday of every month with the same high and tight crew cut for like, three years now. This month he kept the top longer, damn we should have seen right through that.” Emily sounds almost disappointed that the team failed to see the lover effect in full force.
“Hmm, making it easier to grab onto?” Derek asks with a smirk. “My man.” Penelope’s hand comes up to whack the back of Morgan’s head in retort. Spencer stands, looking bewildered by the comment and by the sudden violence.
“Wait a minute. Do they work in this building? I know that face.” JJ questions.
“Yes! That’s it, they work at the reception desk! They always say good morning even when it’s technically 12:09pm. The worst time, though, they even said good morning to me at 2:35! Must have been having a long day.” Spencer laughs to himself, the rest of the team not finding his exact timekeeping anywhere near as funny as he seems to.
“Oh boy, I will have to ask them what bossman’s like on a date tomorrow when I come in. This is too good an opportunity to resist. Maybe we can bribe ‘em with a latte from down the street, babygirl we gotta find out how they like their coffee.” Derek wraps an arm around the blonde, trying to appeal to her pro-level social media snooping skills for assistance.
“He looks happy, guys, like, lovesick puppy level of happy. Maybe we just leave this alone, let them… come to us when they’re ready?” Garcia offers, sounding surprised at her own voice offering to stay out of someone’s business.
The others all seem to agree with their chirpiest team member that the only way to let Hotch continue being their happy, joking, playful boss is to make sure this person stays in his life, and the best way to do that is by letting them be. Of course, this won’t stop them all from racing towards the South window the next time Hotch leaves work on time, but he can’t exactly punish them for looking, can he?
Things continue in this fashion for a few weeks, and the team marvels each time at the amount of physical affection their boss is comfortably showing in a semi crowded carpark, bustling with agents coming on and off the clock. He’s become less and less shy about letting his arms find home around your waist each time the two of you stroll out of the building. It isn’t until your ninth date was rescheduled for the second time that the team got to see the two of you up close. Aaron’s team was working around the clock to find the source of a classified information leak in a neighboring bureau department.
You got off work, your smile falling when you saw a text from Aaron that he was probably not making it out of the office at 5, let alone before dawn the next morning. So, you set off to the chinese takeout place a street away to fetch his team some fuel. You got an assortment of mains, sides, chopsticks and cutlery, and a bag so full of drinks you thought the handles would break, sending eight cans of carbonated sugar to explode against the pavement, spraying everywhere. Luckily, you were able to double bag the contents and successfully bring it back to Quantico and up to the sixth floor.
The elevator doors opened and it was like setting foot inside a life-sized beehive, agents whizzing past you in all directions, manilla folders being passed around and stacked haphazardly on desks where phones rang and rang with no free hands to answer them.
You manage to weave your way through the hustle and bustle and into the bullpen, where you spin around, looking for any familiar face when you spot Aaron and his team in the conference room, blinds half drawn to occlude the whiteboards from sight through the glass. You knock against the door to the conference room with your knee, not having so much as one finger free to knock on the wood. Your heart is racing with the excitement in the room, though, the agents all seem to be radiating a sort of anxious feeling so potent it feels like the air is thick with TV static. The door swings open, revealing a very wrinkled Aaron standing before you. You feel the sharp, anxious twinkle of the static clearing from before your very eyes like fog meeting sunlight as Aaron looks behind you, looking left and right before he smiles at you and pulls you into the conference room, closing the door.
“Sweetheart, what’s going on? Are you alright?” Aaron asks you, placing a hand on each of your shoulders and looking at you to study your face.
“I’m fine, love! I just thought you guys seem so busy, you could use some dinner.” You raise the bags in each of your hands, seeing Aaron’s frown lines fade and his dimple appear in their absence as he and his whole team smile over at you. Aaron takes the bags from your red hands, surprised to find they’re both so heavy as Morgan clears some space on the roundtable for the food. A wave of ‘thank you’s wash over the room as Dave, Penelope, JJ, Emily, Spencer, Derek and even your Aaron all show you their gratitude at the offering of fresh, hot, food on what was bound to be the longest night they’ve worked in months. Aaron pulled you into his side as the team each introduced themselves to you, shaking your hand excitedly as they all failed miserably to hide the fact that they already knew your name and exactly why you’re here.
You open all the containers of food, explaining all the options you brought and which ones are meat-free for Penelope and offer each agent a drink with a smile, feeling Aaron’s gentle hand resting on the fall of your shoulder as you hand spencer a knife and fork you got specially for him and Aaron asks you if he can get you a plate ready. The team is starstruck, both at your display of kindness and thoughtfulness for every member of his team, and at how comfortably you seem to fit right against your boss. The two of you are practically joined at the hip, each time Hotch asks you a question his hand finds your knee or your arm or your waist to brush over it and get your attention. After a full minute passes of his hands staying away from your body, you move your wheely chair closer to his, looping your hand under and around his bicep, elbow resting on the armrest of his chair as he engages with a conversation with Reid and Dave regarding how exactly the leak of this information stands to gain anything from it.
Once Aaron’s scarfed down his plate of food, his free arm lays over the back of your seat, curling around your far shoulder and rubbing there as he checks in with you if any of the information you’re hearing has upset you at all. He offers to find some place to sit alone with you if you’re uncomfortable for another ten minutes or so before he has to go back to the investigation.
Emily and Penelope are sitting at the opposite side of the table, completely in awe as they watch their boss who’s usually known to move almost like a statue, very calculated and still. If he’s undisturbed long enough he can actually often appear as if he’s not even breathing or blinking when he’s hard at work. But here, he moves so naturally with you. The two of you have a way of reassuring one another without a word that you’re there for the other and you’re okay without so much as making eye contact.
Garcia audibly gasps when you lean in to place your head on the slant of Hotch’s shoulder, your eyes fluttering closed for a moment as most of his team is engaged in a conversation about the possibility of a team of people being responsible for the leak when Hotch looks down at you, a smile of unbridled adoration donning his face and he cranes his neck to kiss you on the crown of your head. In front of everyone. In the middle of a meeting about an emergent situation, her boss found enough joy in his heart to smile widely and kiss you, while you’re nuzzling your own smile further into his neck. She never thought she’d see the day her compartmentalizing, dedicated to a self-destructive degree boss actually found someone that loves him so freely and so openly that he’s actually comfortable enough to do the same.
“Garcia, is everything alright?” Aaron asks, Penelope is ashamed that her audible surprise has dragged the happy couple out of their special moment as both of your eyes are blinking back at her, concerned.
“Everything is just swell, sir. Couldn’t be better, actually.” Penelope smiles, beaming with pride and eyes darting between the two of you.
“For the record, Garcia. I agree.” Hotch offers his own proud smile and a wink as his voice lowered to a whisper, half of the team not registering the interaction as Spencer was rapidly scanning seven files at once with the wave of his hand, looking for the exact time logs from the door to the evidence storage facility on the nights in question.
From that one fateful evening onwards, you became a staple attendee at any and all BAU family functions. The team had loved you from the moment they met you, for you had changed their stoic, slave-to-his-desk boss forever. You had changed him slowly and so kindly that he had seen it happening all around him and still didn’t care to question it.
The whole team, even the young doctor Reid noticed the difference between Aaron and his past partners compared to you. How when you entered the room, Aaron’s hands would start to seek you, and you’d find him, letting him hold onto you. You knew his past experiences had made him paranoid of losing those he loves, and you don’t mind one bit proving to him that you’re still there. They all noticed how whenever you or Aaron laugh at something the group said, your eyes find each other to see the other smiling, feeling free. They all grew to love seeing the two of you moving in the same spaces, your bodies never falling out of step or losing their harmony. No matter how stressful Hotch’s work gets, you can always find a way to soothe his stresses away, with a hand kneading at his shoulders or a gentle thumb grazing against his cheekbone, your hold cradling his face. You made Aaron feel okay with looking possessive, or small and delicate, or just looking like a man in love. You showed him it’s okay to need reassurances and that he’ll never have to be the only one offering them again.
You’ve shown him a love that burns so brightly he doesn’t mind loving you publicly or in private, loudly or whispered in a longing ear. Aaron Hotchner loves you freely, without restraint. He loves you on your quiet mornings just as he loves you from behind a karaoke mic at a crowded bar. His love for you grew too fast and too beautiful for him to contain it anymore. He will tell you he loves you in every language he can. Because from the first time the two of you made contact, like flint on steel, there’s been a spark. He’s glad you were brave enough to reach out and take hold of it, the two of you keeping it safe, because now the heat from that flame keeps you both warm even on the coldest nights.