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alicewonderao3 · 5 months

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Mutual Pining

Title: Mutual Pining

Characters: Aaron Hotchner, David Rossi, Spencer Reid, fem!original character.

Pairing: Aaron Hotchner x fem!original character

Warnings: None, fluffy. Use of fem!character, mentions of violence typical for criminal minds, Aaron has a nickname for her.

Summary: She's been pining after her gorgeous boss for a while now, and is unwilling to believe the older man might possibly return her feelings. What happens when she gets injured on a case, and he proves her wrong?

Authors note: So this is something I've had in my drafts for a long time now. I started writing it and just never had the motivation to finish it until today. I didn't realize I used one of the prompts for @the-slumberparty's naughty or nice challenge until after I'd edited the piece, so I'm submitting it at as well. I'm rewatching Criminal minds and working on a piece out of my wheelhouse, a soft!dark Aaron Hotchner. It's gonna be good. As always, I have no beta, and if I missed any warnings or tags, let me know, and all spelling and grammar mistakes are mine. Enjoy!

Word Count: 2,553

Life can be cruel sometimes. It can be downright nasty, but right now, I can't help but curse life with all my being. I'm working at my desk, and I'm supposed to be studying crime scene photos and helping form the profile so we can catch this latest in a long line of bad, bad men, but I can't. How can I be expected to focus when Aaron's just standing over there, talking with Rossi about something, I'm not sure what, looking as gorgeous as he is?

It's a shame. I sigh, returning to my work when I see Rossi's eyes catch mine, watching me admire Aaron, and my cheeks flush and I duck my head, my dark curls hiding my face as I examine the crime scene photos with a sudden interest. The two walk by my desk, but say nothing. Rossi is the only one in the office who knows of my crush on Aaron, revealed one night when I arrived early at his house for a team dinner.

He's the only one who knows how much I like him, and admire him. He's told me to make my move several times, but it's hard. I don't know if Aaron even likes me in that way, let alone if he even notices me. Sometimes he tends to look right through people, with that single-minded determination he's got.

It's easy to like Aaron Hotchner. So easy. The man is gorgeous, and tall, with dark brown eyes and hair that is never out of place. And don't get me started on the suits he wears. They fit his muscled frame beautifully, and the man has no idea the effect he has on me by simply walking in. But it's not just looks. Aaron's funny, intelligent, and incredibly sweet.

There is a lot hidden under that cool reserve he has, that mask he uses to keep the world out. He keeps people at arm's length and has ever since Haley died. He keeps Jack close to him, and I can't help but adore the little boy. After his dad, I'm his obvious favorite, and he loves hanging with me at my desk. I keep a special drawer in my desk just for Jack, full of dinosaurs and his favorite snacks, plenty of crayons and coloring sheets, and books.

I sigh again, glancing down at the crime scene photos with a wince. I should be working, not here daydreaming about my older, but attractive boss, but he doesn't make it easy for me. Lucky for me, he's also completely oblivious to my feelings. Or how women view him in general. He hasn't dated anyone since he broke up with Beth a few months ago.

I glance up as I feel a pair of eyes on me and see it's Aaron, standing outside his office, looking over the bullpen. I know he's making sure we're making progress, and his eyes catch mine for a moment, making my heart skip a beat and my breath catch. I look up at him, sending him a warm smile, one which he returns, to my delight.

He wanders back into his office, and I sigh. I jump when I hear Rossi's voice. "When are you going to tell him how you feel?" I sigh, fidgeting with my fingers for a moment. "I don't know. I don't even know how he feels," Rossi sighs again, his voice frustrated. "You won't know until you talk to him, you know. Maybe he returns your feelings?"

I sigh, but there's something about Rossi's remark that catches me off guard. "Wait, what do you know?" I asked him, and he just shook his head. "Uh-huh, flower. If you wanna know, you go ask him. Better yet, tomorrow is casual Friday. Wear that pink sundress you wore to the last team dinner."

He walks off and I watch him, shaking my head. Flower was Aaron's nickname for me. It was only his nickname for me. He did have sort of a soft spot for me, although I insisted he didn't treat me any differently than the other agents. He was the only one who was allowed to use it in regards to me and everyone knew it.

Morgan had nicknames for everyone but me, and when he'd innocently called me flower, hearing Aaron do it, was the last time he'd used it. Aaron had turned to look at him and raised an eyebrow. He didn't speak or ask any questions. Morgan held his hands up and never called me that again, but he did tease me about being the only agent allowed to call Hotch by his first name.

I decided to take Rossi's advice and showed up for casual Friday wearing said dress. It was a soft pink color, with tiny white flowers scattered on the fabric. It was modest enough for work while still hugging my curves, my leg poking out of the slit as I walked through the office. I couldn't wear the pink heels I'd worn at the team dinner with this outfit, but I wore pink Converse instead. My dark curls were loose, pulled back in a half-ponytail with a flowery clip.

Aaron was standing outside his office, observing the agents as we all arrived and his eyes met mine. I could have sworn I saw something in his eyes as he saw me, but it was gone. I smiled warmly up at him, and I wasn't surprised when Rossi handed me some files to go drop off to him.

I knocked softly and walked in, meeting his eyes. "Good morning, Aaron," I said softly, my voice warm and gentle. His eyes met mine and I saw his face relax. "Good morning, Flower." My smile got wider as I walked in, setting the files on his desk. "Rossi asked me to give these to you."

He nodded at me, and said, "Thank you, flower." He picked one up and it was a clear dismissal. I nodded and left his office. Rossi met my eyes and said, "Well?" I shrugged my shoulders. "I gave him the files," I said softly.

I walked away as Rossi shook his head. Then he caught my attention. "Hey, Alice?" I turned to face him. "Spencer needs help with that profile, help him will you?" I nodded.

I spent the morning in one of the conference rooms with Spencer helping him. My soft laughter and giggles filtered out into the hallway and bullpen as we worked. I enjoyed working with Spencer. We liked a lot of the same things and had the same sense of humor. He always made me laugh. I may have missed the way Aaron would stare extra hard when Spencer made me laugh, but Rossi hadn't although I didn't realize this at the time.

Spencer was in the middle of telling me a joke when we heard a throat being cleared. I was facing him, and my eyes were fixed on Spencer's as I looked up at him, my small hand on his arm as he made me giggle, and we both turned to see Aaron standing in the doorway. He had his arms crossed. "Sounds like more giggling in here than actual work." His voice was tight, almost as if he was restraining himself.

"Sorry, Hotch." Spencer said, "We're working." He said, gesturing to the whiteboard. I nodded, my dark curls bouncing. "Yeah. He was just telling me a funny joke." I said, "We are working, Aaron, I promise." I missed the way Aaron relaxed at my words, missed the way his eyes softened as he looked at me, but Spencer didn't.

The team loved to tease me about Aaron's supposed soft spot for me. I said they were crazy. They begged to differ. Spencer's grin got wider a moment and then he casually draped his arms over my shoulders, his hands brushing my sides, making me giggle again. "Spencer!" I said, slipping from him.

I missed the way Aaron's eyes darkened as Spencer's arms slipped over my shoulders, and even more so when I'd darted away and giggled. All I heard was Aaron's voice sharp, as he raised it in my direction for the first time. "Alice, there is a time for laughing and now is not it." He said, and his tone took me by surprise. My whole face fell, but I schooled it.

My voice was softer, subdued. "I'm sorry Aaron," I said, and he just turned on his heel and left, leaving me alone with Spencer, wondering what I did wrong. I helped Spencer with the profile and took it to Aaron later, my voice hesitant, as I set it on his desk. "I have that profile for you," I said, meeting his eyes.

He didn't even look up at me at first, and when he did, his voice was tight, as if he was restraining himself. "Thank you." It was only two words, but the way he said them made my heart sink and my stomach twist. Was he mad at me? I had to know, so I asked. "Aaron?" I asked, my voice soft.

He looked up at me, where I stood in front of his desk, my small hands twisting together, shifting my weight from foot to foot in my soft pink dress and I asked, "Did I do something wrong? Are you mad at me?" My warm honey-brown eyes were locked onto his and I saw him set the profile down, his whole expression softening at the panicked look I'm sure I was wearing.

"No, Flower. I'm not mad at you." He said, his voice gentle, as he stood up, taking one of my hands in his. "I was just disappointed to hear you and Spencer fooling around." He said, and his choice of words made me pause. "We weren't fooling around," I said, confused as I met his eyes. "Spencer was just telling me jokes and picking on me," I said, my head tilting as I looked up at him.

"Well," He said, as he stared down at me. "Didn't seem that way," He said, as he patted my small hand softly. "Now that you've helped Spencer, why don't you-" but he was cut off when Rossi came back in, saying we had a lead on the suspect. Garcia figured out which bar he was getting his girls from and Morgan made the suggestion someone go in as bait.

Everyone's eyes turned to me at once. "What?" I said, meeting their gazes, before realizing what they meant. Aaron was the only one who was against it until Rossi pointed out that it was our only means of catching him. And that's how I found myself at the bar, wearing my communication device and fielding the advances of several men.

The whole time I could hear Aaron's almost tight tone in my ear, "Move away from those men, you need to seem available to the unsub." He says, and I hear the controlled giggles of a few team members at his tone. I slip down the bar and this time when I'm approached, I know it's our unsub. He's charming as he flirts with me, his eyes focused on mine, as he carefully reaches out to tuck my curls behind my ear.

We know his MO is to drug his victims, to get them out of the bar, and so when I set my drink down and turn for the briefest second, I know he's drugged it when I hear that frustrated sound leave Aaron's throat, followed by, "Do not drink that, flower. Get him to take you out near the alley, we're waiting."

I do a good job of pretending I'm drugged, but instead of taking me to the alley behind the bar, he steers me out front, toward the white van waiting across the street. I can hear the team as they scramble to make their way around, and all pretenses dropped, I struggle in his hold, as tight as it is.

He shoves me into a wall, my cheek scraping against the hard brick as he kicks my feet apart, and when his hand covers my mouth to attempt to silence my screams, I bite him, prompting him to shove me harder into the wall, turning me around to slap me just as the team rounds the corner and finds us.

He's taken with brutal force after he's shoved me forward and into Aaron's waiting arms. My cheek is bleeding as Aaron's large hands cup my face, his concerned brown eyes meeting mine ."Are you okay, flower?" He asks, his thumbs gentle as he turns my face this way and that, examining it.

I nod, "Just my cheek," I murmur, and I see his expression grow concerned as he pulls me to the side, bandaging me himself. "How did that happen?" He asked gently, and I saw him tense as I told him how he shoved me into the brick wall. His hands are gentle as he patches me up, and I can't help but say, "Have a lot of practice patching up Jack huh?"

He laughs, the sound soft and gentle. "Yeah, he's always scraping his knee." He says, as he gently cleans my scrape and places a bandage over the scrape. His eyes focus on mine as he sighs. "There, all better." He says, his finger lingering on my cheek.

I don't know what prompts me, but the words leave me before I think them over, my cheeks flushing, "Kiss it better?" I see him tense, his eyes searching mine for something before he nods, leaning in close to me as my heart races in my chest, his lips gently brushing over the bandage. I'm breathing a bit heavily as he pulls back a little.

His voice is husky, "Better?" I shake my head, my curls fluttering along my cheeks with my movements. "Again?" I ask, my eyes soft and voice pleading, as his hand gently cups my face. "One more time," He says, and this time he leans in, his lips brushing across mine with a tenderness I'd never seen from him before. His kiss is soft and gentle, my heart racing in my chest as he kisses me like I'm the most important person in the world to him, our surroundings melting away as he kisses me.

We're interrupted mid-kiss by the catcalls of the team as they catch us, and my cheeks flush as we both pull away from each other. I can see the faint blush on Aaron's cheeks as we hear the team teasing us. Rossi walks up and claps a hand on his shoulder. "I knew you'd do it sooner or later, Aaron." He winks at me as he walks away, and I realize that the team was indeed right. He did have a soft spot for me.

Aaron's fingers are gentle on my face as he promises, "We'll do that again later, without witnesses, flower." And it's the husky quality of his voice, the gentleness of his touch, that makes my heart skip a beat as I can't wait for later. Later, which comes in his office when we make it back to the mission, as his lips find mine again, and the door closing so we have no witnesses this time.

#aaron hotchner 💞#thomas gibson #criminal minds #navy and roo sleepover #aaron hotchner imagine #aaron hotchner x oc female character #mutual pining

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toondisneypunx · 1 year

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I posted 24 times in 2022

22 posts created (92%)

2 posts reblogged (8%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@toondisneypunx

@toondisneyartz

I tagged 22 of my posts in 2022

Only 8% of my posts had no tags

#youtube - 6 posts

#amphibia - 6 posts

#pixar - 4 posts

#the owl house - 4 posts

#inside job - 3 posts

#cuphead - 3 posts

#amphibia season 3b - 3 posts

#arcane: league of legends - 2 posts

#the cuphead show - 2 posts

#little witch academia - 2 posts

Longest Tag: 44 characters

#doctor strange and the multiverse of madness

My Top Posts in 2022:

Notice in the latest Owl House episode, Luz’s mother looks at an article about Anne being banished to Amphibia:

These two shows are in the same universe!

23 notes - Posted May 28, 2022

10 more animated characters you may or may not know are autistic

So, I discussed 10 head canons last year and I decided to implement 10 more head canons this year. Link to m post from last year: https://toondisneypunx.tumblr.com/post/647331530293837824/10-cartoonanimated-characters-that-you-may-have

1. Aaron Mitchell (The Mitchells vs. The Machines)

While watching The Mitchells vs. The Machines, I could easily tell that Aaron is autistic. Aaron is hyper fixated on dinosaurs, so much, it takes over his life. He avoids social situations, such as when he tried to approach a girl who like dinosaurs and ran away from her. Aaron is a great representation of autism because unlike other characters, he has a clear passion and special interest for dinosaurs.

2. Akko Kagari (Little Witch Academia)

See the full post

30 notes - Posted April 3, 2022

Famous Animators that did NOT attend CalArts

CalArts is the top animation school in the world. Most well known animators attended the school and created famous movies and TV shows. I personally applied there and got rejected, and I hope to reapply and get accepted one day, even though it is super expensive. I basically made this post to cope with the fact that I am not going there.

1. Ben Bocquelet (creator of The Amazing World of Gumball)

Attended École des Métiers du Cinéma d'Animation, a French college in their animation program. So stop saying Gumball has the “CalArts style”.

2. Dan Povenmire (created Phineas and Ferb)

See the full post

36 notes - Posted May 1, 2022

When you are both excited and sad for The Owl House season 3:

I will deeply miss this show. Dana deserved way better from Disney.

49 notes - Posted September 15, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

So you are telling me that SVTFOE came out 7 years ago. I still can’t get over the fact that they didn’t get together in the finale:

395 notes - Posted January 19, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

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baddie-mattie · 3 years

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watched Mitchells vs the Machines and i love this movie

#mitchells vs the machines #mitchells vs the machines spoilers #anyway i love aaron #him and his special interest in dinosaurs... heavy same #i *still* love dinosaurs and can (sometimes) talk about them for hours #and a main character lesbian!!#with a pride pin!! throughout the whole movie!!#more movies should do that #plus the whole thing is meme material #in conclusion: i love this movie #and note to self: this should be next movie night #because there are SO MANY details i'm sure I missed

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queen-of-my-goofball-army · 3 years

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Undiagnosed Autism-spectrum disorder in The Michells Vs The Machines

I'm sure that more well educated people have put two and two together in this film but I really, really want to put my own spin on it from my experience. For me, as an aspie, film is one of my biggest interests. I love studying and more than anything I love watching and rewatching films. My latest favorite movie was one that I just watched last night for my family movie night, The Michells Vs The Machines. I also went 17 years of my life asking myself the same question that both Rick and his daughter ask each other, what is wrong with him/her?

Well, I'll tell you, in my firmly undiagnosed autistic opinion for far too long, that this family is full of people with undiagnosed autism spectrum disorder. When I was watching it with my parents my mom made the comment that "the dad was a jerk" and maybe "he just didn't love his daughter enough to let her be her own person." I thought that was so not seeing the bigger picture even though it was only fifteen minutes into the film. I have felt like Katie so much with my own dad. My dad is a computer nerd and a physics major for those of you that don't talk to me very often. That means in laminas terms that he's extremely smart. Way smarter than I will ever be in my entire life. Both of my parents are insanely smart in their own rights. My mom is a CPA accountant. But that isn't what I wanted to talk about here. I want to discuss the effect of undiagnosed autism and what it can do to a whole family when they all have it and just don't know that they do. This will probably go on for quite some time so you may stop here or read below the cut because this also has the probablity of getting super, duper personal.

We'll start with Katie! To me, Katie is one of the most relatable characters that I have ever come across. She's a film nerd, which alone has made her supremely relatable as somebody who is thinking about going into a degree in film studies. I am more of a critic of film than somebody who wants to make her own film but nonetheless, there were SO many little moments that I related to. The first thing that I personally noticed and related to was the stimming technique that Katie has. She chews on her hoodie strings. As somebody who has chewed on the drawstrings of hoodies far too often long before I was officially put into the Aspergers box. Aspies are also known to stick with one "special interest" for the rest of their lives if it's one that is wide enough and varied enough to make it applicable. For Katie, that's film. For me that's animation. I appreciated that little detail of most of her dialogue being references to other films because as a lover of films and movies in general I could go for days on just fumes and movie references that nobody else understands. The little things from her hair being perpetually messy (same that's a whole ass mood like I just learned over quarantine how to tye my own hair back), only having one earring in her ear at all times, the way that she dresses and draws on her own hands, this was just me when I was first in high school. I was one of the few people that wore shorts underneath all my skirts/dresses. Everyone who knew about looked at me like I had grown a third eyeball.

Aaron, the younger brother, also just oozes spectrum lil buddy out of his every pore from his being. I do think that they should have picked somebody capable of doing a bit of a younger sounding voice (I know what they were going for, but like Ben Schwartz has become a huge deal in both voice acting and live action before switching mediums.) His special interest is actually quite a common one, he loves dinosaurs. I've met a bunch of people on the spectrum that are fascinated by dinos and what they meant for the world as well as the universe as a whole. To me, there was one scene specifically that was the scene where Katie was lightly teasing him when they were going to the half assed dinosaur extravaganza. For me, this was SO relatable because both of my parents will mess with me about my interests most of the time it's when we go to Disneyland, they'll tell me that we actually aren't going to land of magic but to Timbuckto (hopefully one day they'll say some place else just to switch things up.) I related so hard to Aaron's protesting and whining in this scene since that is always my reaction to doing something that I want to do but get told that I can't do that thing.

Linda is more of your traditional mom but I think that she's on the spectrum as well. Just a more... normalized version as opposed to her family. She's able to be a teacher, she's able to interact somewhat normally around her neighbors. If anything, she reminded me of my own mom. This independent, takes nobody's trash (especially not her husband's), strong minded, and amazing mother who is completely in control of everything. She knows the special interests of her children and is constantly thinking of what will make them happy. Whether it be taking a detour for something dinosaur related, reminding her daughter that her dad loves her no matter what, and even something as simple as watching something that her daughter made and put her heart and soul into. I can't tell you how many times my mom has watched something with me. She watched my first anime Soul Eater with me when I was 12 and ever since then has been trying to get me to watch other shows with her. She's a lot like Linda, your loving, but firm mother who just wants her family to work things out.

Whew boy. This one is going to be probably where I cry. Comparing my dad to Rick is... something that I did consistently when I was watching the film. He's the strong but silent type usually, unless your me and he's just this constant annoyance when I'm trying to do something. He could be seen as just a "Jerk" but I think that is the undiagnosed aspie talking. Rick and Katie just struggle so hard to see eye to eye because their special interests can't intersect to save their lives. This, this hurt me because so often I struggle to relate to my dad. Especially when he talks to me about computers or physics. Now I took physics but without having been in quarantine and having him as my live in tutor I would have failed, not gotten an A. This has resulted me in saying things that I don't mean in the heat of the moment when we do argue. It doesn't happen nearly as much as it used to back when I was in middle school but when it happened it was because of one thing. I lied. I used to lie a lot because I felt so unworthy of being his daughter because on my best days I am not technically smart. You want to know how many nations of the world there were in 1991 when the original Animaniacs was airing? You want to hear my Dot Warner impression? Did you ever wonder how to recognize a specific voice when your watching anime? Have you ever had to watch a panel of your favorite anime voice actor just to laugh at something? No, well I did. But ever since I have started taking a quarter off from community college I have realized something. I am not technically smart. I struggle at learning the rules for math. My dad can do this with his eyes closed but me, I struggle and look like a complete moron. It took years for my dad and I to see eye to eye. Sometimes I still wonder if I was the product of some laboratory experiment of what would happen if two intelligent people came together, fell in love, and expecting that the daughter was smart I was the reject. Watching this movie with my dad I saw so much of my relationship with him on the screen. Struggling to relate to one another, fighting and getting into arguments about petty things, and not being able to be in the same room as one another without heated words because I didn't get him.

The scene that I related to the most when it was in terms of how much Katie just doesn't understand her dad was after he was nabbed by the machines. When Aaron asked her why she said those things to their dad and her simple answer was "I don't know." This. This right here was when I saw me. So many times I've gotten into heated arguments with my dad when he has simply annoyed me at the wrong time and I've just blown up in his face. Then I regret my actions and not know how to apologize for losing my temper with him because "I don't know" just doesn't seem like a nearly acceptable answer. I felt this in my soul because it happened especially often before I was diagnosed.

When I was diagnosed, things started to get better with my dad and I. We haven't had a fight in nearly four years now. He watches cartoons with me now to try and relate to me, it's mostly Pinky and The Brain but it's more than I could have ever asked for. I love my dad so much, more than anything in the entire world. This movie is so, so good at telling a story about how a family of undiagnosed aspie's and people on the spectrum struggle to relate to one another because their special interests are different.

Special interests and family's are especially difficult and I applaud this movie so loud because of the way that it was able to treat the subject matter with integrity and honesty. I'm sorry if this analysis got a little bit long in the toof but thank you for sticking with me! I really hope that if you watched the film you loved my analysis.

#the mitchells vs the machines #aspergers #movie analysis #denki shut up #nobody cares about your emotional backstory #long post #this took me over an hour because I kept crying

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theonlyth1nghere · 3 years

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currently thinking about aaron mitchell and his dinosaur special interest

#god i loved all the characters in this movie #and all the mitchells are autistic :)#the mitchells vs the machines #tmvtm #aaron mitchell

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eternalghostviolence · 3 years

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as a kid with adhd seeing aaron get so excited about his special interest and NOT have anyone tell him he’s being annoying or to shut up or anything else just means so fucking much to me. i cried so much during the whole movie because thats the way it should be when you have neurodivergent kids. and my parents are nd as well but still didnt treat my adhd the right way because they didnt know better and seeing a movie like this its just ahh!!! it makes me so so so happy. like i was that kid (and still am tbh) obsessed with dinosaurs and the titanic and freaking miniature figures for my dolls and just to imagine if my family wholeheartedly supported me and loved me even when i was ranting about my little hyperfixations, this movie is just a fucking masterpiece. literally just finished watching and interrupted my girlfriend at school to tell her to watch it asap because it just means so much to me :) this is how family relationship should be shown in kids movies and just film in general. literally the best movie ive seen in my life <3

#tmvtm #aaron mitchell #katie mitchell #the mitchells vs the machines #linda mitchell #rick mitchell #adhd #autism #neurodivergencies #film

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nataliedanovelist · 3 years

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GF & MvsM - Wanna Talk About Dinos?

This crossover was inevitable. It just works too well. Maybe one day i’ll write a fic about how the folks at Gravity Falls handled the robot-apocalypse. Probably shrugged it off. “Eh. We’ve had worse.” Haha! What if Stan and Ford, cuz they were out sailing, had no clue what happened and when they came back they were like, “Wait, what?”

For now, please enjoy this fic of Aaron making a new friend...

(credit goes to @stephreynaart for her OC Jacob) ~~~~~~~~~~ “Hi, would you like to talk to me about dinosaurs?”

Aaron asked this question more times than he could keep track of, but that wasn’t going to stop him from asking it. It started as a dare from his big sister two years ago, but now it’s a fun hobby. When fifth grade isn’t overwhelming him, scaring him with mountains of homework and horror stories about how hard middle school is going to be, and when he’s run out of YouTube videos to catch up on, he is on the hunt for fellow giant-lizard-lovers like a hungry Ceratosaurus.

“No, okay bye.” But it did get a little tiring to always cross out names and phone-numbers on the phone book with red ink. Hey, a dinosaur of a way to find phone-numbers was appropriate. He read the next number, dialed it, and after a ring or two he asked, “How would you like to talk with me about dinosaurs? No, okay thank you.”

Aaron crossed out another name and sighed, taking a break since he reached the end of a line of numbers. Maybe he should just be grateful for Abbey and accept that no one else wants to talk about the Jurassic Period. Or the Cretaceous Period. Or the Triassic Period. But then a big, old, gray-tinted ad distracted him. He grinned, thinking it would at least be fun to give them a call, and he dialed the number.

Private home phone-numbers were fun, but businesses were also fun! Poor, bored workers would gladly talk to him rather than crabby Karens, and they got paid for it! So Aaron smiled as the phone rang, and he grinned when someone picked up.

“Thanks for calling the Mystery Shack, you’re talking to Mr. Mystery himself! How may I befuddle or bewilder you?”

“Hi! How would you like to talk with me about dinosaurs?”

“Oh, dude! I’d love to, but I’m scheduled for a tour of the Oddity Museum in three minutes.” The man said, and Aaron grinned continuously, because it sounded like Mr. Mystery really wanted to talk with him about dinosaurs. “But hey! Can you hold on for one minute, I think I know a guy!”

“Yeah, sure mister!” And Aaron was greeted by the sound of a catchy jingle about buying t-shirts and mugs and snowglobes. He smiled and wiggled his feet along to the music as he looked outside at the beautiful late-fall afternoon, entertained while he waited.

~~~~~~~~~~

Soos was on the hunt. He planned out the house in his head. Abuelita was taking a nap upstairs, Melody was organizing the upcoming tour, and Stan took Jacob out for ice cream, so he might be…

The owner of the Shack grinned when he stopped at the doorway and saw the man he was looking for, sitting in Stan’s chair, reading a book.

“Uncle Ford!”

The old sailor smiled up at the young man. “Yes, wh-...”

“Do you think you could answer the phone for me? I have a tour and I think this customer’s request is right up your alley.”

“Uh… sure, but w-...”

“Thanks, you’re the best!” And Soos was gone before he could address Ford’s confusion.

Ford was a bit lost, having little to no business with business, but he had learned at this point to trust Soos, so he picked up the phone beside him and was immediately greeted with a sweet, “How would you like to talk with me about dinosaurs?”

Ford grinned and closed his book. “I would love to! All three periods are equally as fascinating to study, but the Triassic contains some of my favorite dinosaurs!”

A young voice gasped on the other line. “Mine, too! Everyone thinks the Jurassic period is so great, and it’s pretty cool, but the Triassic gave us Plateosaurus and the Brachiosaurus!”

“That’s very true! You know, it’s very interesting, maybe depictions don’t include feathers at all, which is a bit frustrating, but perhaps after the news has spread they will incorporate more feathers on merchandise and textbooks.”

“YES! That’s what I wanna do when I grow up, help draw better-accurate dinosaurs!”

~~~~~~~~~~

The phone rang on Sunday. The Shack was closed today, so Stan lazily answered it and was greeted with, “Wanna talk about dinosaurs?”

“Sixer, phone for you!”

Ford ran into the living room, elbowed his twin out of the chair, and took the phone. “Hello again, Aaron! Now, where were we? Right, so Australopithecus. … No, I don’t think… Oh! No, homo habilis was erect, Australopithecus was never fully erect.”

“Maybe he was nervous.” Stan groaned, getting to his feet.

Ford shot him a look as thankfully the young boy on the other end didn’t catch that and happily shared some more fun-facts about homo habilis.

~~~~~~~~~~

While most college students were excited for Spring Break so they could get drunk or lose their virginity, Katie was excited because her family had planned a special secret roadtrip. She was careful to keep up with her family and talk to her parents and brother frequently, but Aaron had a hobby he wasn’t talking about that his parents found out and were thrilled about. Aaron had made another friend.

Rick and Katie did some research and the tourist attraction sounded right up their alley! In the middle of the woods, tons of weird stuff, and a fun roadtrip filled with diners and attractions. They decided to surprise Aaron, and they made up a lie that they would spend Spring Break in California with Katie so she could show her family around San Francisco, when in actuality they would be traveling up the state to the Redwood Highway and see the oddity place, and maybe even allow Aaron to meet his new pen-pal. Or, um, phone-pal.

So after bombarding Katie with hugs the Mitchells threw her luggage into the car and drove off. Aaron turned to Katie and excitingly asked, “So where are we going first? Can we go fix the Golden Gate bridge by painting it gold?”

Katie laughed and ruffled his hair. “Maybe later, right now I wanna show you guys this fun store right outside of town. Here, check out the videos I made for my classes!” And she pulled out some airpods and gave one to Aaron.

“Cool!”

Rick and Linda smirked at each other as they drove north. By the time they reached a little diner in Redding, CA, it was very clear to Aaron that they weren’t in San Francisco anymore. “Come on, just tell me where we’re going!” The boy begged as he fed Monchi a fry.

“The best kind of prizes are the surprises.” Linda quoted.

“Eric, Deborahbot5000, where are we going?”

“Sorry, Aaron, we cannot give that information.” Eric said, he and the other robot sitting politely in their seats, happy to be a part of the social interaction.

“Yes, Mother will bury us if we disobey.” Deborahbot said matter-of-factly.

“What?! No I won’t, sweeties.”

“Won’t you ground us?”

The family laughed and Aaron let the topic go; if he was honest, he loved a good surprise. The big family stopped in a motel just at the California-Oregon border, and the next morning after muffins and coffee and orange juice they were on the road again, passing dozens of trees that made Rick feel at home. Katie happily recorded the trip, trusted to be the documenter for another fun roadtrip, with hopefully not as much mortal peril.

Aaron watched as they left the highway for a simple road, and they passed a big sign. The boy gasped and caught what was happening. “No WAY! Really?!”

“You know, I hear this Mystery Shack even has a Sasquatch.” Rick commented while Linda pulled out a pamphlet from the glove box.

“It says here it’s full of odd things you’ll never see anywhere else, even a dinosaur footprint…”

“Wasn’t there a rumor of there being a Bottomless Pit?” Katie asked, pointing her camera at Aaron to get his reaction.

“Thank you thank you THANK YOU!!!” Aaron cheered, hugging his Dad’s neck and kissing his Mom’s cheek.

“Hey, no worries, buddy.” Rick eased, fixing his shewed glasses. “We wanted to see this place, too!”

“Why don’t we eat a quick lunch and then we’ll take the backroad for the attraction? There’s a coupon in here for a diner made from a giant log!”

And so after being served by a pretty blonde teenager at Greasy’s, they drove through town to get to the backroad. Signs made them confident that they were going the correct way, as well as Eric and Deborahbot5000’s GPS. Then as they turned a corner, a big triangle-shaped building came into view. Aaron grinned at the giant sign with a missing letter. People were already leaving, arms full of souvenirs and one or two already wearing their new hats or t-shirts. Once Rick parked in the Free Parking Lot, Aaron spilled out of the car and ran for the shack, but he stopped.

Katie caught up to him and patted his back. “You cool, man?”

Aaron shrugged, holding his hands in front of him and his shoulders up to hide his face a bit. “I-I dunno… What if… What if he doesn’t like me?”

“Hey, I get it.” Katie admitted. “When I first met my friends I was really nervous. I had talked to them online for weeks and I was worried it wasn’t gonna be what it was all cracked up to be, but it was. Your system worked! You found another dino-lover! You earned this moment. Just take in a deep breath and be yourself, cuz you’re a pretty cool dude.”

Aaron smiled up at his big sister. “Thanks.”

Trusting Eric and Deborahbot5000 to watch Monchi and make sure he used the bathroom, the Mitchells went inside the shack. On the porch there was an ice cooler, a sign reading schedule times for tours of the Oddity Museum, a Help Wanted sign, and two rocking chairs with a game of checkers between them.

Inside the store a few customers filled up the gift shop, alongside t-shirts, snowglobes, a vending machine, a door beside ti that read Employees Only, a bookshelf full of comic on one side and old newspapers claiming alien sightings on the other, a fish tank holding a monkey-mermaid, and barrels full of spaceship keychains and dino claws. A new section called Camping Stuff caught Rick’s eye, selling backpacks, lanterns, flashlights, batteries, canteens, and compasses. Katie opened a comic called Lil’Stanley and laughed at the swears, taking a pic and sending it to her friends’ group chat. Linda looked into the barrel full of patches and grinned at all the fun designs, while Aaron stared happily at the mer-monkey.

The Employees Only door opened and closed and Rick watched as a man in a suit, fez, and eyepatch walked up to the lady at the register and kissed her cheek. The woman smiled lovingly and left while the guy who resembled a gopher checked a customer out. Rick waited until the buyer left to approach the register, leaning an arm on the counter.

“Welcome to the Mystery Shack, dude!”

“Thanks! So, this is gonna sound weird, but my son Aaron talks to a guy here about dinosaurs…”

“No way!” The owner interrupted excitedly. “Good to see you, dudes! I’m Mr. Mystery! Wow, you guys came a long way, huh?”

“Nah, only from California. My daughter is attending art school there.”

While the men chit-chatted and Linda joined them, Katie noticed a guy walking up to Aaron and looking at the mer-monkey. She smiled and tried to read the comic without being too nosy, but she kept her senses on her brother.

“Hm, quite fascinating, isn’t it?” The man in the blue hoodie said. “But I think my favorite is the fossilized footprint. Could be Nanuqsaurus hoglundi.”

“The Polar Bear Lizard?” Aaron clarified, touching his chin as he looked at the dino-print, his back to the man he was talking to. “Maybe, but they’re from Alaska. It’s possible plate tectonics did cause some fossils to be relocated here, but it could also be a Nanotyrannosaurus lancensis footprint.”

“The Dwarf Tyrant? Could very well be. Would you like to talk about dinosaurs after your tour?”

Aaron’s eyes widened as the voice was finally familiar to him. He turned and looked up to find an old man smiling up at him. He had fluffy gray hair with a white stripe running around his scalp, wrinkles by his eyes due to smiling, a cleft chin, glasses, and wore a blue hoodie with a maroon sweater underneath. His hands were behind his back and he smiled down at Aaron warmly, while the boy was jittery and overly-excited. He took in a sharp breath and had to fight every muscle to keep from leaping through the screen door.

“H-H-Hi…” He peeped. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Y-Yeah, sure! I’d love to! I’m Aaron! Er, wait, you already knew that.” And he held out a hand to shake.

His phone-pal, Ford, chuckled and got on one knee to be eye-level. “Greeting, Aaron! It’s nice to formally meet you.”

Aaron shook his hand and noticed something. He had six fingers on his right hand. A quick glance told Aaron he also had six fingers on his left hand. Aaron grinned with sparkling eyes at his new friend, while the old sailor smiled warmly at the boy that reminds him of his niece and nephew when they were young.

#GF #mvsm #mitchells vs the machines #gravity falls #ford pines #soos ramirez #aaron mitchell #katie mitchell #rick mitchell #linda mitchell #eric and deborahbot5000

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hobie-brown · 3 years

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still thinking about the Mitchells vs the machines and how they could have done what so many films and shows do with their autistic-coded characters where theres some arc where Aaron outgrows his love of dinosaurs or there's a journey in which he's mocked for them or its wholly a bad thing or or or and no! Aaron is never punished for his special interest and the jokes surrounding it aren't to mock Aaron or his behavior, they're made with an affection for his passion and his devotion! like!! augh!!

#the mitchells vs the machines #like idk if im spewing nonsense or not but. aaron mitchell my bouncing baby boy #animated autistic characters always hit different but thats probably bc im autistic and my special interest is animation as a whole

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wheelsupnthirty · 3 years

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the best profiler in the room | a.h.

<<sorry not sorry this is literally just angst whoops>>

t/w : angst / crying

wc: 582-drabble

though he was stern and serious, and those eyebrows never seemed to raise, hotch had always had a special place in your heart. by that, you mean you had the biggest crush imaginable on your boss, aaron hotchner. everyone on the team had noticed it, except for the man that was supposed to be the best profilier in the bau -- ironic, right?

penelope made fun of you for it constantly, of course. "y/n! hes at least twice your age!" she'd say. and, while that was almost true, you'd just throw a sarcastic "nineteen" her way and roll your eyes.

derek thought it was hilarious, too, and never seemed to give the winks and smirks a rest. anytime you and hotch were on assignment together he'd say something along the lines of "don't have too much fun you two!" and yet hotch never caught a hint.

emily and jj just thought it was adorable that you had a crush on hotch, with the latter singing, "y/l/n and hotch-ner sittin in a tree" while the doctor sat clueless.

nevertheless, your fascination and longing for the stone-cold unit chief persisted, with you trailing behind in a blaze of flushed cheeks and awkward small-talk any time you were near him.

today, you had decided to come in early to have breakfast with the ladies of the team, which you almost never did. your conversation about henry's latest interest in dinosaurs was rudely interrupted by morgan not-so-subtly nudging your shoulder and gesturing to rossi and hotch who were leaving hotch's office and chatting. confused, you looked to where he pointed.

that's when you heard it.

"well is she cute?" dave asked.

"yes she is, but.." that's all you allowed yourself to hear for a moment as the blood drained from your face.

"well what's her name?" dave prodded.

"beth," hotch replied with a small smile.

beth you thought. beth.

penelope heard, too, and could only look at you with her mouth slightly agape.

emily and jj followed suit, eyes wide, while yours began to heat up with tears. you promptly stood out of your seat and made your way to the bathroom. you closed the door behind you and sobbed quietly. after years of waiting, of pining and crushing and waiting and this is what you get? beth?

the door handle turns and you race to wipe the tears from your cheeks.

"y/n? y/n i am so so sorry," says penelope quietly.

"it's fine," you say with a sniff. "i should have figured this would happen, i mean, i'm way to young for him anyway."

"still you're in pieces! i just don't get how he could have missed you after you've been right in front of him all this time," she says sadly.

"i'm glad he's finally ready to see someone after haley but i guess i just thought that someone would be me," you said. "i shouldn't have got my hopes up."

the door opens once more. "sorry, y/n, garcia, we have a case," jj says.

"alright," garcia replies for the both of you. she helps you fix your mascara, but your face is still puffy from crying. you head toward the conference room and sit down as if nothing had happened at all.

hotch looks at you puzzled, and you muster a small smile. he mouths, "is everything alright?"

you huff a small laugh and nod back. the best profiler in the room and he still had no idea.

#hotch #aaron hotchner #agent hotchner #hotch x reader #hotch criminal minds #aaron hotchner imagine #hotch imagine #hotch x you #criminal minds spoilers #criminal minds imagine #cm imagine #criminal minds

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mitamicah · 3 years

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I watched Micthells vs the Machines yesterday and it may just be me but Aaron is such an autism mood :’D

Spoilers under this line - you’ve been warned

The obvious one is the special interest in dinosaurs - Katie even says Aaron can talk for hours about it and it is close to the only thing he wants to talk about. He even rings up random people in a phonebook to try finding somebody to talk dinosaurs with.

Speaking of the phonebook the fact that he is doing this (which I see as a structural pattern of behavior) instead of talking to people face to face in the neighbourhood? And we see with Abby how Aaron is quite nervous and figdetty around others which - same. (Also the volume control he seems to lack in front of her)

Also when he figures out Abby too likes dinosaurs he is nervous/happy stimming so hard yet gets overwhelmed directly after, regrets everything he says and runs to hug his father’s legs for support.

Less obvious maybe is the fact that Aaron is so hurt about the fact that Katie lied to their dad. Honesty is really important in my experience as an autistic person and Aaron breaking down because of this is very accurate :’3

There are probably other examples I haven’t picked up on but save to say I strongly headcannon this boy as autistic and I love him the more for it :’D x’D

#mitchells vs the machines #autism headcannon #mitchells vs the machines spoilers #aaron mitchell #mine #micahs thoughts

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magidragon12 · 3 years

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Sooo, Mitchells vs the Machines...

Is a frickin God tier movie!!!!

Easily some of the best neurodivegent rep I've seen in a film in a long time. Aaron and his special interest in dinosaurs just made me so heckin happy!!!! And Katie wanting to find her people and feeling like her family doesnt understand her and her own special interests and hyperfixations just... really hit home for me.

Also the animation style was so brilliant too! The setpeice with the giant furby chase was terrifying, but also really brilliantly shot and honestly made me fall in love with the graphics and stuff like that. And the way it visualized Katie's thought and reactions with the little art edit drawing thingies was so NEAT! And is something I also like to visualise to acknowledge emotions and such irl, so it was great to see consistently expressed onscreen, not something she overcomes, something that is part of her and it's really beautiful! 😢

Also... she cannonically got together with Jade. And wore a rainbow badge throughout most of the movie. And openly showed engagement with her crush. In a kids movie. Not just implied, not just a side characters but an openly LGBTQ+ main character who has a girlfriend by the end of the film. I... is this what love feels like?

And the narrative doesnt focus on these 'qwerks' any more than necessary, no it's an apocalypse movie, a statement on modern technology and its REALLY FUNNY. Like, me and my sister were just laughing the entire way through. Wonderful, wonderful stuff.

Yeah, so anyway, this is a brilliant movie and I encourage anyone who's interested to check it out!!!!

#the mitchells vs the machines #nerflix #lgbtq+ rep #neurodivergent rep #lgbtq+ character #neurodivergent character #aaron mitchell #katie mitchell #movie review

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maybe-itll-be-someday · 3 years

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How Far We’ll Go

Thank you, as always, to the immeasurably wonderful @jetaime-jespere for her support, friendship, and beta of this chapter.

I am a better writer with every word because of you.

Read on AO3.

Chapter 16

By the time flowers bloom from small buds aided by the warmth of spring, they celebrate Jack's seventh birthday at a local park and she stops monopolizing Aaron’s every thought.

The passing months had dulled the persistent ache in his chest - the one that had set him on edge after the wedding, traces of her perfume in his nose and her taste on his tongue. He had pressed his phone to his ear, a blush of a mark that she had drawn on the base of his collarbone, with absolutely no clue as to what he wanted to say. He just wants to hear her voice and ask her why.

Aaron tries for three days, her new number practically burned into his keypad as he dials the same thirteen digits over and over again. The night on that balcony was a sliver of hope, a small flicker that ignited a flame he had thought had long gone out. But the flame is extinguished as fast as it starts, doused by the never-ending dial tone in his ear and dozens of unreturned calls.

She never answers and he decides that he isn’t going to spend his life waiting for a phone call that would never come.

Aaron perfects a routine that avoids anything too reminiscent of her. He gets the strength to clear the expired creamer in his fridge he's conveniently forgotten about, tossing the shampoo bottle that's been nearly empty for months, and gifts the cat mug to Garcia who was none the wiser as to its previous owner. He starts to drink coffee at the office instead of at home and drives to and from work in a route that avoids the park they used to train at and the cafe where he first realized that his feelings had morphed into something soft and sweet, like the lemon curd pancakes that she used to order.

Now, he and Jack eat waffles on Sundays.

She meets Mark through a friend, being pushed into a conversation by their mutual connection, who insisted that they would get along. Emily resents the introduction, but feigns interest and agrees because she's lonely and for once, she doesn't want to think about the way the rough edges of brick pressed into her back as he drilled into her, as desperate and erratic as she felt.

Mark is surprisingly engaging, witty and smart as he talks about his work in corporate law, specializing in mergers and acquisitions. He's incredibly normal - filling his days with visiting his parents on the weekends and running when he can squeeze it into his calendar. His eyes light up when he talks about how he enjoys kayaking in the mornings and Emily is jealous of the seemingly simple life he lived. She finds herself drawn to the light he exudes because all she's known is shadows, secrets lurking with threats of unravelling the composure she's carefully built. He's bright and unscathed, and she wants a taste of what that's like.

When he slips her his number, soft and sweet into her palm, she blushes.

She tries to ignore that his eyes aren't the shade of brown that she wants and promises to call him.

Mark is sweet and persistent, insisting on seeing her again. She's hesitant at first, her breath hitching when he asks if she wants to get dinner the following Saturday, if she wasn't travelling for work. He has a very minimal understanding of what she did and for that, she's grateful, avoiding having to relive memories she isn’t interested in sharing.

She realizes that she'll probably never be truly honest with him, but says yes anyways.

He's easy to read. He's nervous, evident by the constant tugging on the cuffs of his sleeves, unconsciously fidgeting the small buttons between his fingers. He tries to impress her with his knowledge of wine, but quickly admits that he really didn't know the difference between wines aside from being red and white. She laughs and orders a Merlot that she loves and asks him what it’s like to be a corporate lawyer.

The conversation flows easily as does the wine, swapping book recommendations and Mark insisting that she would love hiking and that he would take her sometime. When the wine blurs her vision slightly, he kisses her and they end up back at her apartment, their clothes strewn across the living room as he touches her nervously as if she was made of glass. He's clumsy and unsure, fumbling with the zipper of the black dress she wore and spends a while attempting to unhook her bra. He finishes before she does and she barely gets anywhere, the coil in her abdomen tight with no relief in sight.

She slips into her shower when he falls asleep, muscles taut and tense, a stalled release still deep in her. She turns her shower head to the highest pressure and lets the warm water beat on her skin as she stroked herself, chasing the release that she needed after months of large piles of paperwork and being pulled away on one case after another.

Emily thinks of him, the veins on his forearms that formed ridges underneath his skin, thick and bulging as his fingers stretched her open. How he had curled right there and flicked just like this and it isn't long until she's toppling over the edge with the well-worn memories of him seared into the back of her eyelids.

She slips into bed next to Mark when her muscles are looser, the warm shower and orgasm dissipating the remaining tension she's been carrying around for weeks. She stiffens when she realizes that all the covers are pulled over around him, leaving no warmth on her side of the bed and she fights the annoyance that flashes through her and the subsequent pang in her chest.

She hated it when they hogged the covers.

The next morning, he makes her breakfast of eggs that he had run to the store to get while she was asleep.

Mark’s in her kitchen, using the only pan that she owns because she really doesn't cook aside from easy mixes she could throw together quickly, and makes her slightly overdone scrambled eggs and apologizes for falling asleep last night and wants to see her again. He's still nervous, fidgeting with last night's clothes that he had thrown on in an attempt to look decent, and she doesn't have the heart to say no .

Mark is uncomplicated and distracting and she wants to be distracted.

He smiles wide and drops a kiss on her lips before saying that he had plans with his sister and would call her later.

The eggs are left untouched on the counter.

She makes chocolate chip pancakes instead.

He meets a museum curator named Beth when he volunteers to chaperone Jack’s field trip. He had snuck away from the rest of the group, choosing to wander over to the classical art section as the kids ran mayhem in the dinosaur exhibit downstairs. His ears were starting to ring from the loud, high-pitched conversations about the stegosaurus and figures that a break would save his sanity.

He’s staring at a painting that is adorned with broad strokes of red. It’s an abstract piece of work, the lines fluid and dancing across the canvas. The movement reminds him of waves of red fabric, draped across ivory thighs and falling with every thrust of his hips.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” A light voice chimes, shattering the memory and suddenly reminding him where he is. He turns to the sound of the voice and his breath is slightly knocked out of his chest.

A pair of dark brown eyes are staring up on him, accompanied by a bright smile and deep dimples. Long brunette locks cascading like waves down her shoulder, a lightness to her that he doesn’t think he’s seen before. She radiates light.

He isn’t used to it - his entire life had somehow been shaded in different layers of darkness. His father’s calloused knuckles, Haley and his divorce, Haley’s death, Emily’s sudden departure after a taste of what his life could’ve been like. Things that brought him light were usually ripped away, torn from his hands at the seams. He’s used to lurking in the darkness.

“It’s gorgeous.” He says and she smiles.

Later, with her number saved into his phone and promises to call if he wanted to come back for a private art tour, Aaron wonders if she can help shine a light on the darkness that was determined to follow him around.

Emily doesn’t know what’s wrong.

She doesn’t know why her temper flares ever so slightly when his soft palm flexes over her knee. Why when she feels the slenderness of his fingers against her thigh, her first instinct is to pull away.

Her temper flares when he leaves his clothes in the bathroom like a child, the mirror covered in streaks from his fingerprints. She savors being alone at night, glad to not have his cold toes accidentally brush against her calf and his annoying habit of monopolizing the covers on his side.

On nights where she’s alone, grateful for his absence, she tips whiskey into an empty glass and savors the burn of the alcohol.

She used to hate dark liquor.

Now, she doesn’t know what she’d do without it.

There’s something about Beth that Aaron can’t quite place.

She’s kind and sweet. She’s smart and passionate about art. Her entire being lights up, her expression animated as she talks to him about the difference between the key differences between Greek and Roman art styles. She drinks tea and loves pop music and brings a smile to his face when she pulls on his hand to dance with him in the middle of her living room on a rare Friday night when Jack is with Jessica while Katy Perry is playing in the background.

Beth makes him smile and for a split second when her lips are on his, he forgets the hole in his chest that he’s gotten better at hiding with time.

It still doesn’t stop his dreams to be filled with memories of her, of maple syrup and of cups of coffee that grew cold on his kitchen island in favor of playing pirates with Jack, or of mornings spent watching the soft morning light dance on crumpled sheets and gentle curves.

Beth is uncomplicated and distracting, and he wants to be distracted.

On a quiet Sunday, he brings her to the cafe that he once frequented. His memories of the place had dulled, now blurred by the passage of time. He wants to make new memories - those untouched by the memory of lemon curd pancakes and their bikes sitting on the rack in front. He holds Beth’s hand loosely in his and guides her through an old routine still embedded in his muscles.

A sting of familiarity hits him, seeing Beth read a menu he thinks once upon a time he could have recited front and back. She orders french toast and a chai tea, which he points out is actually translated to tea tea. He expects her to roll her eyes and sarcastically reply, but instead Beth just smiles and giggles.

He ignores the pang in his chest when he realizes who he really expected that reaction from.

“Is the food okay?” Beth asks out of the blue, snapping Aaron out of his reverie.

“Oh yeah.” He pushes a piece of bacon to the side, suddenly losing all of his appetite. “Just not as hungry as I thought I was.”

Maybe there were just some places where she would always haunt him.

When he drops her off at her house, she wraps her arms around his waist and gives him a soft peck.

He catches a whiff of her shampoo and he realizes what it was that he couldn’t place.

Her hair smells like oranges.

He swallows the lump in his throat and promises to call her.

He buys a bundle of oranges before he goes home, determined to rewire his brain to prefer orange to lavender.

By the time the leaves start to fall, he’s forgotten what lavender smells like.

By the time the leaves start to fall, she feels like she’s simply going through the motions.

She floats through it all - a seemingly mindless blur of passing days. She floats through her days with Mark, her cases with Interpol, and her life in London.

Until one day, she sinks.

She loses someone on her team after a year of being their unit chief.

Peters was one of her younger agents. He had a degree from Oxford, an extensive background in linguistics, and had just recently proposed to his long-time girlfriend. He had just turned 31 a few weeks before they lost him.

She doesn’t lose him to another job opportunity or some notion of his that he wanted a normal life outside of days spent travelling to far off countries in pursuit of evil. She loses him to an unsub, a pistol pointed straight at his chest as a man with evil laced in every fiber of his being unloaded four bullets point blank.

She can still recount, moment by moment, how her carefully crafted plan had fallen apart so grandly. They had to lure the unsub into an abandoned warehouse by the river Seine to help the Police Nationale arrest him the moment he stepped one foot past the door.

The unsub, a terrorist from an old cell that Interpol had believed to have broken apart years ago, had lured them into a trap. The cell had gone underground, instead of completely disbanding, and fell off of the Interpol radar. They had resurfaced in recent years and they were on track to arrest the right-hand man of their leader.

If only she had known that while she was concocting a plan, they were already concocting their revenge.

Peters had ended up trapped, the only body in that warehouse as her team scrambled to escape while she was at the command center down the street, ordering whoever was around to get her team out .

She had heard the shots, her heart faltering in her chest when she realizes what those four cracks in the air meant. A moment too reminiscent of that day outside the bank.

Emily doesn’t let her team see her falter. She was their leader and a fearless one at that, and she was determined to keep a stony facade as she delivered the news to his family that he had died in action.

She thinks the sound of his fiancee’s wail at the news that her future husband had died would haunt her for the rest of her life.

“He was a great agent, and it was an honor to have him on our team.” She said, as his fiancee’s face crumbled into tears as his family came around to grab the last of his belongings. She had made a point to clear the desk herself, forcing herself to touch all the things he will never use again and pack them all in a neat box.

Forcing herself to relieve the consequences of her actions over and over again, so that she would never forget how one decision could alter the course of someone’s life.

She wonders how many decisions she’s made that ruined someone else’s life.

Peters’ death weighs over her like a stormcloud, the anger and disappointment that brews under her skin seeps into her judgement. Her temper is on a short fuse, mistakes that she would normally let pass now needled with a fine point that she knows is unnecessary. She’s hard on her team, and even harder on herself, in an attempt to grasp some semblance of control after the tragedy had shaken their foundation.

It doesn’t help that her office overlooks her team’s desks and every time she glances up, her heart catches in her throat when she sees the new agent is at his desk, empty of the framed picture he kept of his fiancee and the pictures of his family he tacked on his cube wall.

She’s no stranger to the nightmares that start haunting her after his death.

She wakes up in a cold sweat most nights, and on the nights that she’s with Mark, she tries to drown herself in wine to blur the dreams so she didn’t startle him with her nightmares.

It only lasts two weeks before the dreams get too intense even with the aid of an extra glass of wine at dinner and Mark insists that she start seeing a counselor. Clyde insists on it too, when she comes into his office with dark circles under her eyes and the heaviness of Peters’ death still clouding her.

He gives her a mandatory two weeks off to try and process his death, ordering her to see an Interpol-approved therapist in London, but the lack of work is more detrimental to her than she anticipated.

Without the menial tasks and challenge of work to keep her occupied, her mind immediately floods to replaying Peters’ death in excruciating detail. How she was powerless at the center of it all, the ice that flooded her veins at the cracks in the air, how she was the one who found his body, a pool of dark red beading underneath the bullet hole in his neck.

She spirals in the silence of her apartment, the vast emptiness of the space that is permeated with loneliness and darkness.

Her phone is pressed against her ear before she can think twice about it, not wanting to back out of a decision that she knew was treading a dangerous line.

There was a chance that he wouldn’t pick up, maybe a twisted form of revenge for letting his calls go ignored, unwilling to provide him with the answers he craved after that night.

He could’ve just let the phone ring, ignoring her call the same way she had done all those months ago. She honestly doesn’t know if she could handle him not answering, despite him having a completely valid reason to.

But he doesn’t. He sounds surprised when he answers, cautiously greeting her.

“Emily? Is everything alright?” Relief floods her at the sound of his voice and she lets out a soft sob at her name passing through his lips.

"You told me to tell you if I was having a bad day." She says, the tears clear in her voice. "I'm having a really bad day, Aaron."

She sinks, but Aaron is the lighthouse that guides her out of the darkness.

He listens as she blabbers, managing to get the full story in between tears and soft sobs. He doesn’t interrupt, doesn’t press for information and instead lets her tell her story at her pace. He makes soft soothing noises while she’s crying and when the sobs dwindle down to soft sniffles, he speaks.

“You did your best, Emily. That's all we can do.” He says. “The rest is part of the job.”

“Who told you that? She sounds wise.” She teases, his words immediately sparking a memory of a shared moment they had in a different lifetime.

“She is.” Aaron’s voice is soft, tone lowered like he was speaking information that needed to be confidential and she can almost see the way his eyes would shift, tucking his chest away from the door.

Another secret, just one more to keep between them.

“His fiancee, Aaron. I don’t think I will ever forget the way that she sounded. The love of her life died.” He understands the implication of her words. It reminds her, too much, of that day at the bank. How she could hear her own curdling screams in Jeanette’s, aware of the hole that opened up in her world the moment that Peters’ blood pooled on that abandoned warehouse floor.

She lived that horror for a brief moment in the ruins of the explosion, searching for him in the rubble.

“She’ll find love again.” He says. “I did.”

Emily doesn’t know if he was referring to her, or the new girl that Penelope had hinted to, but she takes those words and tucks them away to be saved on a day she needed it most, taking its spot right next to Jack’s drawing of the three of them and his old Georgetown shirt. She replays the memory of her old words, when she stares out into the bullpen and straightens out her blazer before walking into her first briefing back.

The rest is part of the job.

They start to exchange calls. He starts, calling her one random Tuesday morning as his confidence was fortified by the alcohol in his blood. He was sitting in his hotel room in the Los Angeles heat, a cheap motel that was the only accommodation they could find on such short notice. The air is hot and sticky, the unusual humidity in Southern California causing beads of sweat to form on his neck.

He calls her, skin damp and his chest thick with old wounds resurfacing at the desperation in Mrs. Payton’s voice at his presence at the precinct instead of out in the streets looking for a little girl who was around Jack’s age when he was taken by Foyet.

They had successfully saved Phoebe but he knew all too well how wrong it could have all gone.

He thinks of Haley. He knew that she loved as fiercely as Mrs. Payton, who lashed out at him in the elevator. She was desperate to do anything to save her child.

He knew that Haley’s last sacrifice was the same - done in desperation to save Jack.

The thirteen digits are still embedded in his fingers and he plugs it into his phone the same way that he did that night.

Except this time, she answers.

She stays on the phone with him as long as she can, before she’s whisked away to a series of bureaucratic meetings where her attendance is mandatory. She listens when he talks about the case and doesn’t have to ask him how he feels about it.

She inherently knows which parts of a case would brush too closely to his scars.

“You won, Aaron. You saved her. Don’t kill yourself thinking of what could have happened, because it didn’t.”

He wonders why her words are the salve that soothes the hollow ache in his chest.

The next time he calls her, he doesn’t have any problems to talk through. Instead, he calls with a wordless urge that he’s worked hard to suppress, letting the need for her pour out of his being in a flood. He knows about Mark, a casual detail that Garcia had let slip after one too many margaritas during a team dinner.

But part of him doesn’t care.

“Hi.” He says, a small smile on his face when she answers, breathing his name out in a way that triggers a forgotten memory of soft morning light that broke through his window, the day barely beginning and him already occupied with tracing the length of her spine with his fingers.

He had been without her for so long. He thinks he’d have her anyway she’d take him.

“Did your meeting go well?”

He was an addict, and she was his vice.

He craves the way syllables roll off her tongue, the lilt of her laugh when he narrates Jack’s adventure at the water park, accidentally sliding head first on his back on one of the larger slides. His heart skips over itself when her number flashes across the screen, even when he presses ‘ignore’ when Beth eyes his phone at dinner.

“Work?” She asks sweetly and Aaron is unsure if she’s oblivious or giving him the benefit of the doubt.

“Just a friend. I’ll call her back later.” Her eyebrows quirk at his response, but she lets it pass and instead brings up the new art exhibit that was coming to her museum.

Emily is the first one to ask about Beth and he’s stunned into silence, unaware that he had given her any information about his current relationship.

“Garcia told me.” She explains and her tone softens at her next words. “You can talk about her, you know.”

So he does. He tells her about how they met, stumbling awkwardly through asking her on a date that he’s pretty sure he really didn’t end up asking anything, and Emily laughs. She tells him about Mark, and the companies that he consulted for, and how he took her hiking and it was a complete disaster. Aaron listens in amusement when she tells him about all the statistics for killers in remote places and how maybe hiking wasn’t going to be her thing.

Despite the subtle ache in his chest when she mentions Mark, he thinks that the comfort she brought him by hearing her stories outweighs the pain.

Emily calls him when she gets stranded in the rain, frustrated and with no one to talk to. She calls him and he smiles and tells her to duck into a coffee shop to wait out the downpour and that he’d keep her company. He calls her when he’s reading a book and wants to talk to someone about it, because he doesn’t think that Beth would understand The Wisdom of Psychopaths .

She listens to his theories and recommends a book to him, and suggests that maybe they exchange opinions over email. He wakes up to a lengthy email from her the next day, a breakdown of all her favorite quotes from the book and links to articles she thought he’d find relevant to the topic.

They learn how to be friends again.

She’s not stupid.

She can see the way his eyes lit up when his phone rang, his attention always curiously piqued towards the smartphone he kept face down on the table. He never answered her calls, at least not while he was with her.

It was hard not to know her, when some of Jack’s favorite stories included Emily and he retold them so many times she thinks she could recite them from memory. She knows of the emails Jack would write to her, always tugging on Aaron’s sleeve to hurry up whatever he was doing and help him turn on the computer because Emmy was waiting .

But Aaron never mentioned her. She got clipped answers, saying that she was a colleague at the BAU before she moved to London. She hadn’t found it weird, not at first, until her name started flashing across Aaron’s screen more times than she could count.

He always pressed ‘ignore’, but she had a sneaking suspicion that his early mornings were dedicated to her. He would always slip out of bed, at least an hour or two before she would, and she would awaken to his laugh muffled in the living room.

“Hey, I gotta go.” He would say to whoever was on the phone, and stand up to greet her with a kiss.

It wasn’t until recently, on an early Sunday morning, that she heard a small snippet of what he was hiding from her as she stood in his doorway.

“Come on, Em. You know that the only album that’s worth listening to is the White album.”

Beth didn’t even know that he listened to the Beatles.

She’s not stupid.

Syllables tumble out of his mouth, entangled in the dull ecstasy that he was accustomed to after almost a year of being with Beth. He was lost in the snapping movement of his hips, unaware of the words that were slipping from his lips as he teetered on the edge of a release.

She stiffens as he collapses on top of her, a last moan leaving his lips. His sweat is still breaking on his skin when she twists her head away from him in disgust. She pulls away from underneath him, pushing him off with anger.

“Are you okay?” He asks, the sudden change in her demeanor too apparent in the harsh way her hands collide with his chest.

“Do you even know what you just said?” Beth says, her tone biting and unforgiving as she snatches her clothes from the floor, an anger that he’s never synonymized to her suddenly etched into her every feature. Aaron reaches out, wrapping a tender grip around her wrist and she pulls away like his touch radiated with the heat of the sun.

“Beth, I don’t understand.” Aaron says, watching her pull on her clothes and collecting her belongings. She had been prepping for this conversation, for the inevitable break to ten months of companionship. She just didn’t expect it to happen like this.

“Beth, please talk to me.” He pleads, stepping closer to her and stopping her hand from picking up her purse in the chair in the corner.

“Do you know what you said, Aaron?” She asks, the deathly calm in her voice reminiscent of scorned women he’s become familiar with after a long career at the FBI.

“You said her name.”

He doesn’t have to ask who she’s referring to.

He steps back and lets her collect the last of her belongings, her body language stiff and curled as she throws her clothes back on. He doesn’t know if there are any words, if he could say sorry enough times to rectify his mistake.

But he also knows that this relationship would always come to its end.

He knew that before he asked her out for the first time.

“I don’t think you’ll be happy with anyone that isn’t her. Stop lying to yourself, Aaron.” Beth says, before slamming his apartment door shut and walking out of his life.

He pours himself a whiskey, fishing out an unfinished bottle he thought he’d stop relying on. He lets Beth’s words echo in his head.

I don’t think you’ll be happy with anyone that isn’t her.

Maybe he’d always live with an Emily-shaped hole in his heart, the same way that Haley had.

He would never have his first love again. The sweet, light kind of love that was untouched by the harsh grip of reality. Of broken trust, of crumbling marriages, and of psychopathic serial killers.

He doesn’t think that he’d be happy with anyone as long as Emily was on this Earth.

He realizes that he probably wouldn’t have his last love again either.

And that was something he had to learn to live with.

The nightmares start shortly after Beth breaks up with him.

He’s lived a life made for nightmares, so he isn’t surprised when more than one relentlessly steals his sleep and slowly, his sanity.

Some nights, he’s back to being a small child lurking behind the mustard walls of their corridor, listening to the smack of his father’s fist against his mother’s flesh.

Other nights, he relives Haley’s death in excruciating detail. Every moment was still sharp, constructing perfect reenactments of finding Haley’s body in their old den, the crush of Foyet’s bones underneath his knuckles, and Jack helping him on the case.

He tries to save her, but he’s always too late.

Most nights, it’s about Jack. Some variation of him losing Jack - either to someone who had taken him, or an unidentifiable unsub he’s sure he’s seen before but forgotten, that snatched him from his grasp and dragged him towards the shadows. Old crime scenes reconstructed with snippets of his memories, concocting nightmares that starved him of rest.

It isn’t long before the lack of sleep catches up to him. On top of the horrendous amount of paperwork that he had taken on since Strauss had passed, he knew that he was heading right towards burn out. Exhaustion was almost a regular feeling now - never able to shake the sleep that chased him. He was almost sure his diet was solely cups of coffee and a granola bar when he remembered to eat, his attention unevenly split between work and Jack.

He’s startled out of a nightmare when the unsub points a gun at Jack, and he shoots up from his fitful nap on his uncomfortable office couch with a mild ache in his chest and a panic when he’s not in his apartment. There was an open file in his lap, an unfinished report that he had meant to finish before he got home, still incomplete with pen marks staining the edges of the paper.

He would deal with that later, when he had taken something for the headache that was currently thundering around between his temples.

Aaron clumsily reaches for his phone, dialing Jessica’s number while his heart gallops in his chest, a dull ache creeping in when the phone rings for a second longer than normal.

“Hey Jessica, it’s me. I’m sorry, I dozed off. Is everything alright?”

He doesn’t really register the words he’s saying, a throb of pain shooting in his stomach that passes in an instant. Jessica pauses and Aaron assumes that’s the end of her sentence, his neck muscles tightening with a tension he was sure was caused by the couch.

“Ok. And Jack’s alright?”

Jessica confirms that yes he is alright and yes , she listened to his instructions this time and didn’t feed him dinosaur nuggets.

“Great. I should be there in about half an hour, ok?”

He apologizes again, because this isn’t the first time in the last two months that he’s accidentally missed Jack’s pick up time because of work. His chest is tight and his head spins slightly when he stands, but he’s quick to dismiss it when an Amber Alert comes through his phone.

There was no rest for the weary.

She calls him the following Thursday, wanting to ask him about the book he had just recommended.

Her call goes to voicemail and she doesn’t suspect a thing, knowing that his workload has nearly doubled since Strauss died. He had called her well into the night on his timezone, searching for company as she was on her lunch break. She had been pleasantly surprised by the call, being regaled with tales of Jack in between her file appraisals and his complaints about the mountain of paperwork the Director dropped on his desk.

But when she still hears the monotone voice of his pre-recorded greeting when she tries to call later in the day, she begins to worry.

It was unlike him to not shoot her a text that he was busy, promising to contact her at a more convenient time.

There’s a dark pit that grows in her stomach with each passing hour that he doesn’t call.

Dave is the one who breaks the news to her.

A bolt of fear passes through her when she sees Dave’s name flash across the screen.

No.

She answers on the second ring, a breathless hello as Dave greets her, a heaviness in his voice that she notes in an instant.

“Dave, what’s wrong?” She asks, not bothering to beat around the bush.

“It’s Aaron.”

He gives her a rundown of their morning, her heart in her throat as Dave relays the details. Aaron had collapsed during a briefing and they rushed him to the hospital. Internal bleeding, thought to be caused by old wounds inflicted by Foyet’s knife that were reopened.

“I thought you’d want to know.”

“Which hospital?” She prompts, already creating a to-do list in her head of all the things that she needed to make sure were buttoned up before she got on a plane.

“Emily, that’s insane.” Dave says, probably already aware of what she was planning to do and she knows. She knows that it’s crazy.

But she’s suddenly reminded of that day at the bank, when he offered himself as the sacrificial lamb to save lives.

It was that uncontrollable itch that rattled underneath her skin, tearing at the fibers in her muscles as she struggled in Morgan’s strong grip while he walked right into her greatest fear.

She needed to be with him and nothing was going to stop her from doing just that.

“Text me which hospital or I’m going to call Penelope and find out for myself.” She hangs up the phone, ending Dave’s protest mid-sentence.

She books the next flight out.

She can’t explain to him why she has to leave, why she books the first flight that she could despite the absurd amount of money it had cost and the two or more layovers she would have to contend with. She doesn’t even tell Clyde in person, opting to call him and explain instead of taking the time to head to his office, knowing that every second here was another one wasted without him.

“Aaron? Your ex?” Mark asks in disbelief, following her around her apartment as she pulls out her suitcase. He’s pacing behind her, begging for attention but all she can focus on is the panic in Dave’s voice, laced in a pessimism when he relayed the details of Aaron’s condition.

“Mark, I need to go.” She says stiffly, shoving clothes as quickly as she can into her suitcase. There was one seat on a flight that left in two hours - there was no chance that she was going to miss it.

“You’re on the phone with him all the time. His son calls you in the middle of the night. For Christ’s sake, you’re leaving in two hours to fly all the way back to the States .” Mark almost yells and she flinches, absorbing the anger in his voice. She deserved this. She didn’t deserve the understanding, gentle Mark that she had known for all of their relationship.

She was wondering how much he could take before she broke him too.

“Emily, if you leave, I’m not coming back.”

There is a finality in his tone, the end of a sentence she thinks that she shouldn’t have written in the first place.

At his ultimatum, her eyes widen at the realization that she’s shielded from herself for so long. A truth that she had attempted to put into a cardboard box, shoved in the back of her closet, only to be revisited as a taste of light in her darkest of moments.

There was going to be no one like them. No one who would feel as close to home as they felt to her - the safety that Aaron’s arms provide, the pure joy that radiates from Jack, how complete she felt when she was with them.

Doyle had made her afraid, so afraid of losing them that she thought she would sever the connection before someone else had the chance to. At least she could wrap her mind around it, prepare herself for the brutal blow that threatened to tear out her insides at the simple thought of losing them. She could live apart from them if she knew that it was for their own safety.

But there could be any number of things that could take them away from her. It could be an accident, an unsub, or old scars that burst after years of dormancy. She would rather be there with them than 3,000 miles away.

She’d go as far as she needed to.

“Goodbye, Mark.”

She lets the front door close behind her, keeping her gaze straight ahead as she focuses on only one thing.

Going back home.

#hotchniss #aaron x emily #aaron hotchner #emily prentiss #ckbwrites

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