#aaron going to be a big brother in six months | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

silent-raven13 · 2 months

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My pencil on my sketchbook

Normally Miles enjoy a time of peace, being by himself drinking some sort of beverage like soda, water or tea- Heck he loves a good ice coffee. Sometimes he would add a snack and candy to keep his stomach fill while he draws or creative something out of his hands.

His hands are his power, surely it has power because of his Spider-man abilities, but the true magic is his art! His creative mind brings his characters to life.

Miles had the television on and lights for background noise in his home. While fixing himself a snack for tonight; a delicious turkey, ham, cheddar cheese sandwich with lettuce, tomato, and onions. With condiments of mayo, mustard and ketchup. He had a side of one half pickler, and BBQ chips. All with a bag of gummy bears and a cold can of Dr. Pepper. "This looks good." He said to himself with a small smile.

The sight of his perfect snack for tonight had him pump! The eighteen year old had a busy month, there was no time for him to spend these nights alone with all the criminals on the street causing a ruckus, and preparing for his mid-terms. It's his last year, and he needs to have positive scores for his grade. He finally decided to go to school in Columbia University and double major, maybe focus on science class and a couple of art classes to get him started. He does want a good high paying salary, and he enjoys science, as for what type he still needs to think about it.

The best part him and Ganke agreed to try to apply for that school, and Princeton just for fun. If they both get accepted, they can rent an apartment together instead of dorming, and start being roommates. That's if they are able to get, try their first year and get a part time job for their plans for their second year.

Yes, Miles already has his plans set in motion. He knows it's a lot of work to do, but Spider-man always has work to do. Anyway back to him going into his room with his plate of snacks with his right hand and on his left arm holding a bag of gummy bears and his can of soda. He went to turn off the living room television, and dim the light in the kitchen.

Both of his parents are working a late shift, an all nighter and he was left to watch over his baby sister, Billie. He went to her room to find her sleeping in her crib, she suckling on her pacifier, she's already six month old, yet she's so small. His cute little Boo-Boo, Miles loves to watch her sleep sometimes she does this little cute kick like she's fighting someone. She does like to go with him when he's Spider-man, he knows he shouldn't. Still she always love being swing from building to building. He gently rubs her back seeing her kicking stopped. She slept soundly by her brother's gentle touch. Gently placing a warm blanket on her.

Miles let out another small smile with his big doe eyes gleaming at his baby sister. "She's so cute, my little Billie-boo!" He quietly left the room, slowly closing the door without making a sound. He went into his room feeling a bit cold. It's still cold in the city that never sleeps, he went to put on his fuzzy socks on, he wore thick blue plaided pajama pants, and a white t-shirt. He sighs feeling his arms cold, he put on his Uncle Aaron's oversize jacket.

He kept a lot of his uncle's things, all his vinyls, his record player, some of his clothes and old photos of him and his dad's childhood. Sometimes he could smell hints of his Uncle Aaron, a certain scent of old cologne, leather and sometimes a new fresh of Timberlands shoes. Miles let out a sigh about grieving over his uncle still.

Grief is weird... there's times he knows his uncle is gone, and he knows it. Sometimes he slip up, when he get a good grade or draw a cool drawing, he quickly wants to run to his uncle's apartment and show him. Or he'll say, "I gotta tell Uncle Aaron about this!" Then, the realization would hit him like a truck, it hurts to think about. Sometimes he cries about it, sometimes he stays quiet. It's just one of those things about grief.

He sat on his rolling chair swaying side to side as he gets ready with his Me-Time. Grabbing his laptop to play a song on low volume from his Spotify playlist, he had up photos of inspiration, and went on his smart phone to look up other artists on social media to try their style. He likes to challenge himself and see how far his ability can go.

"Hmm this one looks good." He saw an artist working with soft pastels, which reminded him of Steven Universe. He decided to look up a landscape or person to use as references. Of course, he's going to add the Morales' flare. He got up to go on his book shelves to look through his art books, "Where is it?" He found the art book of Steven Universe Art and Origins, and saw he wanted to try the pilot style.

Leaving the page wide open as he set it on the table, he got out his big Mix Media sketchbook. One thing he liked about Rebecca Sugar's work is her drawings of hands, and he wanted to make drawings of Black and brown hands with different poses. "Hmm, gouache or Copics?" He was in the mood to paint, so maybe he'll do quick loose sketches of hands with markers. He had his drawing table slanted in another angle for him to work on hands, he got his art supplies all in order.

He took some gummy bears to eat and got started in drawing hands. Sometimes his tongue is curled out while he focus on drawing fingers. Why are hands so damn hard? He always likes drawing bodies instead of details on feet or hands.

His smartphone buzzed causing his Gizmo to vibrate on his wrist. Looks like one of his friends from another world wants to chat with him. He checked his smartphone to see it's his boyfriend.

Moonflower: Sunflower! You busy today?

Miles placed the rim of his Smartphone on his chin thinking about his answer. Today was his time to draw and enjoy himself, but how should he say it? He didn't realize he kept his boyfriend on read.

Moonflower: Sunflower?

Miles: Sorry bae! Well, i'm sort of busy.

Moonflower: Wat do u mean? 🧐

Miles: My parents are working night shift and I'm watching Billie.

Moonflower: Oh? 😏 So your alone is what I'm reading?

Miles: Bae! I'm serious! My dad didn't like the last time you came by and slept on my bed! 😭

Miles should tell him the truth, but what if Hobie would take it the wrong way?

Moonflower: So? 😆 I'm comin' by, luv.

Miles: Bae, I'm serious. I'm babysitting Billie!

Moonflower: Oh yea? I don't see her on yer lap.

Miles looks up at his window to find Hobie giving a wave. Oh shit, he bites his bottom lip as he got up to open his window to let his boyfriend in. "Hey, bae. I didn't expect you to be here. Were-were you watching me?"

"Once I saw yer text about yer parents not around I got excited to see you." Hobie looks around the room seeing a plate of sandwich and chips and a can of soda. He heard music, saw the room smelling freshly nice and there was a drawing table of Miles' drawings. His dark eyes saw the laptop of a photo of a very chisle black man with only a tight nude boxer posing, "Oi? Who's this bloke?" Hobie got jealous seeing this photo of a muscular male with his arms flexing and his hands together in a weird position.

Miles quickly went over to his laptop being confused, "What?"

"He's bloody naked?"

Normally Hobie never cared about nudes, he believes in freedom in expression. However, ever since he got with Miles, the punker had been known to be the jealous type. His beautiful Sunflower is his, and any other bloke or lass flirts with him, he goes full on scary.

"Hobie, I'm learning how to draw his hands. Look, they are big and strong- very figurative-" Hobie snorted with, "I can see." His eyes on the male model's crotch, there's a huge bulge.

Miles pouted, "Bae!"

"What? I'm sorry, luv- is this why you say you were busy? You were," Hobie's hand mimicking jerking off, "by yer self."

Miles face felt so weird, so embarrassed, "HOBIE!" He shrieks.

"Sunflower, I don't mind if you like to whack your little friend as long as," He grins widely, "It's me."

"Oh god!" Miles know how perverted his boyfriend is when it comes to sex. Not that he doesn't like it, but sometimes he said things out of pocket. "You find out sexting is a thing and I got so many dick pics of you!"

Hobie grins from ear to ear, his arms around his Miles' waist pulling him close, "And you kept them all, eh?"

"You're lucky I had my password on, my mom sometimes checks." Miles gave a cute pout.

"Awe, luv." Hobie leans over to kiss his lips, "Mmm, you taste sweet."

"I was eating gummy bears." His boyfriend said with his arms around Hobie's neck.

His punker stares deep into his eyes, his hand slowly went to grope Miles' rear, "Aye, bae! No, not tonight."

"Awe, why not, luv?" Hobie leans over to kiss his Sunflower's cheek to his neck, "Mm, your sister must be sleeping? 's pass her bed time, init?"

Miles pouted, he wasn't in the mood for it. He wanted to work on his drawings and be in his own little world, "Bae, stop. I wanna... mm," When Hobie's tongue lick his neck almost nibbling to leave hickeys, "Mmmhh."

"Mmm?" Hobie purrs letting the ball piercing on his tongue gently massage into his Sunflower's neck. Sometimes he can be very persuasive, with his hands firmly groping his lover's rear again, "Yer sure?"

Miles places a hand over his punker's mouth, "Nuuuhhh, bae. I'm serious." He cutely stares at him, with those pouty lips.

"Alright, luv." Hobie pulls away to rub his nose feeling an itch. Then he sniff , "So? Why did you say you were busy, luv? It seems like you don't want me around."

Miles pouts hearing his boyfriend sounding a bit hurt. "Hobie, I love having you around, it's just... I'm drawing. I was so busy with Spider-man, school, us! I finally got a chance to draw some stuff I always wanted to."

"Luv, why didn't you say so? I'll be quiet as a mouse, and watch you work." Hobie went over to grab Miles' sandwich to take a bite, "Mmm, delicious, luv."

"Yeah, don't mind if you do, heh." Miles rubs his hand that was his sandwich. Whatever, it's fine, he can make another one. Hobie wants to vibe. So he went back to drawing, and pop a few gummy bears. Then he hears his boyfriend munching on his sandwich.

"Mm, luv. Dis got red onions, nice add." Hobie let the crumbs from the bred land on him and Miles' bed.

Miles turns to look at his bed, "Hobie, your making a mess."

"Don't worry, luv. I'll clean up, go ahead and keep drawing."

Now, don't it twisted. Miles love Hobie, he loves his chaotic nature, his charming wits, and pettiness, but today, he really wanted to be by himself. He had a whole plan to draw and listen to his music.

Now, with his boyfriend in the picture- Well, let's just say he needs attention every thirty minutes. Sometimes the punker has a habit making noises, look around the room, touching things being curious only to get his attention.

Right now, he's chewing loud on purpose. Miles can block it out since he was on the zone, he added the final touches on the hands with contrasting colors to give more of a pop. He happily set this finish work aside, then went to create a character in dynamic space, he always wanted to try the fish eye mirror.

Going on his laptop, he went on his Pinterest page checking his bookmarks and click the model reference section. He likes to be organized like that. Looking through the models, he decided to have an Afro Latino male model leaning against a wall. His body practically nude, his eyes were hazel and skin dark as Umber with hair in long dreads.

"Wow, what a pretty guy!" He mutters to himself forgot that Hobie was in the room with him.

Until, he heard heavy boots shuffling towards him. Hobie resting his chin on the nape of his shoulder, "That's a pretty bloke, alright." He stares at his Sunflower to say, "But I'm better, hmm?"

Miles let out a giggle, "Bae, you know you're my boo. Hmm..."

"What?"

"Just thinking... Maybe I should do this one. He's outfit is so cool." Miles click another model this time a light skin Latino with an oversize jacket and cargo pants. "It's futuristic."

"Mmm, the first one, luv."

"You think?"

"Yeah." Hobie kisses him on the cheek, "Mmm, take a break Sunflower?"

"Hobie," Miles giggles at his nuzzling, "I just started."

"But I'm lonely."

"Bae, please. Give me ten minutes, please?"

"Alright, and I will make sure your ten minutes are up." Hobie saw the way his boyfriend looking frustrated, "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine." Miles forces a smile before going back to his ideas in his sketchbook, he's so quick with loose sketches on body and form. Hobie always admire that ability, he decided to look at the book shelves filled with mangas, comic books, figures, and art books.

"Hmm," Hobie grab a random book being obnoxiously loud with each page turning, he set his Gizmo for ten minutes, "Nine minutes." He playfully hums.

Miles inhale sharply with his lips pressing together, this kind of stuff he didn't like. It felt like he was being timed for a test, he quickly did a sloppy sketch before using his mix media paper to make his final works. "Hmm, the World of Hirohiko Araki."

*FLIP* Miles hears the pages being flip, he felt like his boyfriend is doing this on purpose. The Hobie's dark eyes glance up with a low mutter, "seven minutes, luv."

Nope, he doesn't like this. When he lazily did the basic guidelines of his cityscape, he hears his boyfriend digging through his bookshelves making so much sounds. Then, he softly hums a tune, "Oh luv, how about some good ole' music. I'm thinking Sex Pistol's playlist, hm?" He rudely went to Miles' laptop to change the song, and he decided to look through the web. "Opps, luv... I think I lost your pics."

"Hobie..." Miles frowns to check the image he was using as reference webpage closed, he went to his history to click back to the site. Then, Hobie plays the music a bit loud, "Bae, Billie it sleeping."

"Opp, sorry, luv. Let me lower it." He headbands to the music, "Now, this is some good stuff." His hands moving to the beat of the drum that he ended slapping his lap.

"Bae, how about you finish your sandwich?" Miles asked then arched his eyebrow seeing the sandwich on the plate, "Wait, where is it?" He saw the sandwich on the nightstand. "Bae, ew! No."

"Come on, luv. It's fine. I'll clean it up." Hobie caught Miles' by the waist seeing him heading to the nightstand, "Dance with me."

"Hobie!" Miles sighs being exhausted with this, he pulls away to look at the sandwich, mayo dripping out of his night stand, "Awe, now I have to clean this up. Hobie, this is gross. You don't know if there's dust on this... eck." He grabs his plate to put the half eaten sandwich on it.

Now, he gotta clean up his boyfriend's mess. Going to get his cleaning wipes from his lower draw for when paint gets spilled, now he use it for whatever. He cleans up the nightstand, Hobie only hugs him, "Luv, relax. I said I'll clean it up." He nuzzles against him.

"It's just..." He presses his lips together, "I rather do it now." He pulls away to go back to his seat to start drawing, then Hobie's watch beeps.

"Times up, Sunflower. Come and snuggle with me." Hobie lay on his boyfriend's bed.

"That don't count, bae. I was busy cleaning up your mess." He snorted at that, "Anyway, let me finish my work."

Hobie frowns, "My mess? I told you I would clean it."

"And did you? No, I have to. I had to stop working on my painting and clean up your mess. When you have the plate right here." Miles inhale sharply trying to calm himself down.

"Whoa. Whoa! No need to snap at me, Miles." Hobie sat up, "You could've left it alone. I know, how to clean up. Don't treat me like a sprog, luv."

"Well, sometimes you act like one." Miles mutters lowly going back to his painting.

"What?" Hobie didn't hear him but he knows it was an insult. "What did you say?"

"Nothing." Miles said.

The Punker didn't like this, his Sunflower is upset with him for no reason. Now, he's getting the silent treatment. Oh hell no! He went over to roughly turned the chair his Miles sitting on. This caused Miles' pen to draw across the paper making him gasp out loud.

The sketch is ruined with a huge inky line. "HOBIE! Look what you did!"

"You can always draw another one!"

Miles scowls at him, "No, this was a good sketch! I was in the zone!"

"You're blimey snapping at me! Talk to me, why are you this pissed off." Hobie asked, "This should be more important!"

"More important? Hobie, my work is important too! Ugh, it doesn't matter," He crosses his arms muttering the rest, "You don't care..."

Furrow lines forms on Hobie's eyebrows, his mouth in contempt. He looks hurt, "I don't care? I don't care!" He repeated almost shouting.

This made his boyfriend winced at his boyfriend's outburst. "Hobie, I-" Hobie snaps at him, "No, you stay quiet and I talk, Miles. You been snappy and act like I'm unwanted here. If I didn't care, I wouldn't visited you- Excuse me for bloody giving a damn after we haven't seen each other over three weeks!"

Miles stood quiet with huff. "Well? What you got to say about that, huh? I haven't seen you and thought since you were done with mid-terms, I can see you!" His voice in a stern voice.

Miles said nothing, being frustrated. "Giving me the silent treatment? For nothing? Wow. Just wow." Hobie scowls. "Look, I know when i deserve the silent treatment and this is bollocks!" His shouting was loud enough to wake up Billie.

Then the baby monitor rings with Billie's cries.

"I'm not giving you the silent treatment. I'm finding the right words, before it sounds all wrong! But fine, think like that." He crosses his arms being upset, "I'ma go check on Billie!" He huffs.

Miles cursed himself, he didn't want to get mad at his boyfriend or say rude shit. It's just- why now? When he wanted alone time? There was times when his Hobie went to concerts and miss their date night, so why is this so different?

The teenager went to check on his baby sister being wide awake in tears. "Awe, what's wrong bebé?" He cooed at her, then felt the room cold. "Ohh, it's cold in here." He swore he turned on the heater.

Billie's hands reaches out for her big brother, "WAHHHH!"

"I'm here." Miles quickly pick her up, "Ohh, you're cold, Boo-Boo!" He got the baby wrap to have her close to his warm chest. She snuggles against his warmth still sniffing, "Shh, I'm here." He went to the heater on the wall, he put the temperature high but nothing came out. "Oh shit." He panics with worried, his baby sister was freezing in her room because the heater is broken.

"Let's get you out of here, Boo-boo." He quickly got out of the room, he bites his bottom lips. Was he this selfish? He didn't noticed the heater wasn't on, he did noticed the room cold, but-but-

What if he didn't go to her room? What if she didn't cry? He only went to go to her because she cried, maybe she woke up because she heard him and Hobie arguing. If Hobie wasn't around, maybe- Oh god, he didn't want to think about that.

Tears dripped down his eyes, he ran to his boyfriend, "Hobie! Hobie!" His voice cracks filled with tears.

The punker's anger washed away when he heard panic in his Sunflower's voice. "Luv, what's wrong? Billie is alright?" He quickly went over to find his boyfriend running into his arms.

"The heater! It's-It's broke in her room- she's cold. Freezing! I'm scared. What if- What if-" He cries holding his baby sister, "I was supposed to be watching her! I didn't because-because I thought she would be fine!"

Hobie touches Billie, she cold but not freezing. "Luv, calm down. Calm down. You're frightening her." Billie started to cry again feeling her brother's panic. "Shh, calm down. She's fine. She just needs to be warm. Look lets lay on the bed and snuggle, wrap this quilt. She'll be warm soon."

"But-But- If you didn't come over, she would've froze to death and-and- I'm a horrible brother. I'm a horrible person. I'm a bad boyfriend! I suck," Miles cries out loud, "I'm so sorry, Hobie. I'm sorry. I was being selfish and-and-" Hobie hugs him, "Shh, luv. It's alright. You're not a terrible person. Get that outta yer head. Let's go to the bed."

Miles nodded still sniffing as he comforts his baby sister. Hobie wipes his tears then kiss him, "I love you, no matter what, okay?" Kissing his lips again.

"Mmhhmm," His Sunflower sniffles, "I love you, too." The two lay on the bed together, Billie snuggles against her brother quickly falling asleep. Miles stares down at his baby sister, she's so calm.

Hobie gently touch her forehead, "She's normal temp." The punker had the quilt on them after he removed his heavy boots.

Miles lay on his punker's shoulder, "I'm sorry I was such an ass, baby. I..." He bites his bottom lip.

"You know, you can talk to me about anything, luv." Hobie lift his chine up to stare in his eyes.

"I-" He gave a long exhale then softly said, "Today I was planning on just working on my artwork. I was so excited to finally work on my skills since I haven't been drawing for these few months, because of Spider-man, school... us."

Hobie nodded in silence. "I was happy being in my own little world, but you came and I was surprised. Because I wanted to be alone and draw. Maybe that's why I was such a jerk. I'm so sorry Hobie, I didn't mean to be one. I didn't even think about us not seeing each other for three weeks. I should've known you miss me. I should've known! I'm a horrib-" Hobie places his index finger on his Sunflower's pouty lips, "Shh, I get it. I should've been more considerate. You're not horrible, luv. I know, you had artist block for a while. I got too excited to be with you. It's exhausting being busy all the damn time. I like being alone from time to time." He still looks upset.

Miles moves closer, "Hobie, I love you with all my heart, your mi amor. I know I should be more vocal about this stuff but it's hard for me. I do love having you around. I shouldn't have it got to me. You didn't deserve it."

"Luv, this is not your fault. So what we argued? I know you're sorry and love me." He sighs, "I'm sorry for yelling at you. I just hate the silent treatment."

"Only when you don't deserve it?"

"Now, that's an argument for another time." Hobie let his long arms wraps his beloved's waist, his lips kissing Miles' neck. "Mm, gimme me another kiss then I'll forgive you."

Miles giggles, then kisses him. Hobie being a sneaky fellow, snuck in some tongue. "Mmm, Hobie." Miles gasps.

"I didn't say what type of kiss." He playfully stick his tongue out showing off his tongue piercing.

"Oh yeah," Miles went for another kiss this time he bites down his punker's bottom lip, then slowly pulls it then licks it. "How about that?"

Hobie turns pink, he lowly said in a lustful tone, "Your lucky your sister is here or else I would've pounce on you, luv."

"Hmm, awe, too bad, pookie." Miles' sweater fell off his shoulder, which left his shirt to show a bit of his shoulder, "I probably would've let you."

"Damn, you're a cheeky one, Sunflower." He huffs, "Maybe I shouldn't forgive you."

"Nuuuuh, mi amor! You already said it so too late." Miles rested his head on his boyfriend's chest.

"Cute, luv." Hobie gave him a sincere smile, "You know, I can hold on Billie bloo and you can finish painting."

"Nahh, I'm fine being here with you, my Hobie." Miles said, feeling his sister's warm body on his chest.

"Well, you can bring your little sketchbook and I'll hold her."

"You sure?"

"Yeah, hand her here." Hobie took Billie in his arms, "I like watching you draw, Sunflower."

"Okay!" Miles happily went to get a pencil and small sketchbook, "I've been practicing on hands." He flips through his sketches. The two would snuggle together, while Billie sleep in Hobie's arms. Hobie watches his Sunflower draw hands with expressive movements.

"Beautiful work, luv." Hobie kisses Miles' revealing shoulder, "Always a wonderful artist."

"OH yeah? Are you sure you're not buttering me up so I can sleep you with?" Miles teased.

"Luv, I would never, but tomorrow I'm free and you can come by." He wiggle his eyebrows.

Miles giggles, "Okay, I'll come by." He kisses his boyfriend's feeling those soft lips, "Mmm, my Hobie." He rest his head in his Hobie's chest again feeling happy.

"My Sunflower." Hobie hums with joy.

#punkflower #miles morales #hobie brown #spiderman #spider verse #across the spider verse #fanfic

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wrenreid · 2 years

Text

Off Limits

Spencer Reid x fem oc

Content warnings: talk of death, violence, daddy issues, alcohol consumption (legal age), guns…

Part One

College life has been great… is what I would say if just six months ago I didn’t get a call from my father saying my mom died because he didn’t catch some criminal. I’d known a little bit about the jackass who’d been hunting and tormenting my father only because Dad bothered to share minor details for my safety.

When I had refused to put my last year of undergrad on halt because the great Aaron Hotchner had pissed off an unsub so bad that he began hunting my family, I was granted a body guard instead. Granted isn’t exactly the word I would use though. I would say forced to have some big guy follow me around while my mom and little brother hid out in an undisclosed location. But Dad told me it was either that or I join my family and put graduating on pause.

For the two months I had Marcus following me around and not letting any cute guys near me - which I thought was ridiculous because clearly the gorgeous basketball player from the neighboring housing dorm, Andre Taylor was not George Foyet - I had the audacity to feel sorry for myself. But then that self pity turned to rage and despair when Dad called me crying and told me what happened to my poor mother.

Haley Hotchner was not just my mom; she was my friend, my confidant, my lifeline. My dad and I have always been close, but I could tell Mom things I could never have him knowing.

I moved back home for the rest of that month and well into the next. I did my college work online; luckily my professors were lenient with me given the situation I was in.

Come mid October, I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to go back to New York. My dorm room was waiting for me, and the house I grew up in was suffocating my entire being. Everything in there was sad, not just my father and Jack. Mom’s things that remained untouched would taunt me, making me miss her even more. The house reeked of depression and death.

Dad was upset when I told him I was going back to the university, but he understood. He knew he couldn’t lock his 21 year old daughter in a depressing household and use her as a baby sitter while he avoided his sadness by diving into work. He also knew that if he did, I would’ve grown to resent him even more than I already had.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my father. We had a great relationship while I was growing up. However, there had always been a hole in the house, a hole in my life. He was always gone for work, especially when he started at the BAU when I was ten. He started missing more and more important days in mine and my mother’s lives. My twelve birthday for example: Dad was supposed to pick up the big surprise present my parents had bought for me, but he answered the call from Agent Gideon and headed to Oregon instead.

My mother left some very “nice” words for him on his voicemail that day. I didn’t cry though, or even tell Mom I was sad. I just sat beside her and watched all my friends play while I secretly and silently hoped my father was planning some big surprise and a case was his cover up. But the real “surprise” was that my hopes were horribly crushed as I waited hour by hour at the door for him to show up.

“C’mon, baby,” my mother brushed my hair out of my face with gentle strokes. “It’s passed your bedtime.”

I had fallen asleep in my hopeless wait. I nodded to my mom and stood up, half consciously letting her guide me to my bedroom upstairs.

I began to grow some sort of spite for my dad that day. Of course he was still my father, and I loved him, but I never quite saw him the same. Sometimes I would feel as though me, his baby girl, was less important than work.

I thought that this would end when my baby brother Jack was born. Dad was home for a while, and the four of us were a happy, functioning family. I was a senior in high school, so my father was running out of chances to be with me, my mother made sure he knew that. I thought I would get to have my dad back.

But soon enough, he went back to work and was only there 2-3 days a week most of the time. I think Mom grew to have spite for him as well. Actually, I know she did because she called me one day after class and told me she was divorcing my father. I felt sick to my stomach. Our family was falling apart, and I was at university 230 miles away. And my poor baby brother was only 2.

Anyway, after going back to school things started to get a little better. My aunt became Jack’s practically live in nanny, and Dad seemed to be doing much better after a few months.

Now, it’s March, six months after my mother’s gut-wrenching death, and I think our family’s going to make it. We’re the Hotchners after all, and we’re nothing if not stubborn, so I think we’ll survive this just out of spite of George Foyet and everything he stands for.

Sometimes, when I drink a little too much (or not enough), I can imagine the horror of the moment Foyet almost took my father from me too. He told me a little about both times he was attacked, and every time I think too much about it, my stomach hurts, and I feel sick.

I’ve been asked before what if I think my dad killing Foyet was too harsh, but I don’t. I don’t find it harsh enough for what that evil thing deserved. It’s obvious that he would’ve gotten to Jack then maybe even me - I’ve seen his female victims, I’m just his type - if Dad hadn’t finished him off.

“Jade,” my best friend since middle school waves her hand in front of me. “Jade, you’re doing that thing again where you drift off into space.”

I shake my head a bit then look at her. “Hm? Oh sorry, I was doing that again.”

“Where’d you go this time?” She asks, a look of concern on her face.

“It’s not important,” I shrug her question off. “Let’s do body shots!”

I grab her hand and drag her to the living room of some guy we’ve never even met. The too-loud music guides my hip swaying as I lead CeCe to the crowd of people cheering and laughing. Two hot guys lay on the table as some chick older than me places a shot class full of clear liquid, Tequila, on top of his belly button.

“Who’s next?” She asks with a drunken smile.

“Me,” I say and step forward as annoyed sorority girls whine about me ‘cutting in front of them’, which is an elementary term for it, but the only one I can see fit.

The girl grins and looks me up and down. “Brave of you to go against these cult chicks,” she tells me. I make the safe assumption that she’s not a fan of sororities.

I shrug and move my hair out of my face as I lick the salt from the guy’s abs, take the shot of tequila, then take the lime from the girls teeth, all in one pretty smooth motion I think. I suck the juice off the lime and make a scrunched up face before opening my eyes again. I see CeCe laughing at me and shaking her head.

“You are something, Jade,” she chuckles as I walk back over to her with a little skip in my step.

“I’m a fun- haverer,” I say then laugh at my stupid made up word. “Why aren’t you having fun? You’re being so lame.”

“I am having fun. I’m just worried about you.”

“Don’t be! I’m just making this spring break amazing,” I say, wrapping my arm around her shoulders.

“But I j-“

“Nope. Do not pull the dead mom card. Only I can pull the dead mom card because It’s my mom who’s dead,” I say. I know she’s worried about me because I’m back in DC for the first time since my mom’s funeral, but I don’t need her worries.

CeCe sighs but nods. “Okay. I won’t pull that card.”

“Thank you. Now I need some fucking beer,” I say, heading to the kitchen.

“Don’t you think you’ve had too much to drink?” my best friend asks.

“You sound like my dad.”

“Actually, I have not warned off every guy here, thank you very much,” CeCe laughs softly.

I join in on the chuckle, rolling my eyes. “As funny as that is, it’s not inaccurate.”

Protectiveness is not a word used lightly when used to describe my father. I know he’s showing his love in his own way, but it’s overbearing at times. I wasn’t allowed to date until I was 16, and even then he let every possible suitor know that he was fully trained and armed.

Basically, no guy wanted to go out with me because they were scared my dad may ring them by their necks. And I suppose my father can be kind of intimidating when he wants to be, but I don’t quite see it. Sure, he’s serious a lot, especially now that my mother is gone, but I’ve seen his soft, goofy, smily side. I guess the bitch boys I tried to date hadn’t, so they were on the verge of pissing their pants when thinking about what FBI agent, Aaron Hotchner would do to them if they even just kissed my cheek.

Even when I moved off to college, the guys still were scared to do anything with me because they knew who my dad is.

“No way, dude. She’s an FBI agent’s daughter, your balls would be shot off and stuffed into your mouth if you tried to tap that.”

That is a literal quote from a frat boy I heard talking to his friend in the common area. It was quite the visual and quite the obnoxious thing to hear.

I take a swig from a bottle I dug from the cooler. As the liquid hits my taste buds, my stomach does an unsettling flop. “You know what? You’re right, I’ve had too much to drink,” I tell CeCe and hand her the beer.

“Let’s just dance instead?” She suggests.

“I like your thinking!”

The two of us head over to a group of people and dance with each other and the cute guys we’re around.

A guy with straight blonde hair makes eye contact with me, and I smile bashfully. He makes his way over to me and asks if I would dance with him.

“Well, I’m already dancing, so why not?” I shout teasingly over the music.

He chuckles and moves to the beat along with me. Feeling a little flirty, I wrap my arms around his neck.

“You’re a pretty little thing,” he says to me.

“Thanks.” I say, but it’s more like a question because he called me a thing when I am, if it wasn’t obvious, a human being.

“So what brings you to this party?”

“Oh you know, just wanting to have some spring break fun. I just got back in town fro-” My sentence is cut off my lips crashing onto mine. His mouth is hot and taste like alcohol, but then again that could also be my mouth. His hands roam too far down my back, and I free myself from his grasp.

My hand connects with his cheek with a satisfying sound. “You can’t just-”

I’m cut off once again by the man who’s now holding his redden face, my hand print on it. “You bitch!”

“Maybe that’ll teach you something, jackass,” I huff and make my way out of the house.

I can hear guys “oh”-ing dramatically, half laughs in their voices.

The music is getting way too loud; I can barely hear my heart pounding in my chest even though it feels so harsh and loud.

My name is being called from behind me, but I don’t turn around. Instead, I sit on the porch of the house and take a deep breath.

CeCe finally pushes her way past the crowd of people and catches up to me. “Jade,” she says. She sits down next to me but doesn’t say anything else for a moment.

“That was pretty badass of you to stick up for yourself like that,” she finally says, a small grin on her face.

“I don’t have a law enforcement dad for nothing,” I chuckle softly. “Plus he had it coming.”

“He for sure did. Someone definitely needed to smack that cocky grin right off his face.”

I grin faintly and run a hand through my now extremely loosely curled hair.

The two of us sit on the porch for a while until I feel sober enough to go home. CeCe, who was kind enough to be DD tonight, drives me back to my dad’s.

He moved into a two story apartment when Mom filed for a divorce. We stayed in the house for a while after her death, but eventually Dad moved him and Jack into his apartment. I think that was the best for all of us, so we weren’t surrounded by the memories of what happened between those very walls.

“You sure you’re good to walk up there on your own?” CeCe asks me.

“Yes. I’m mostly sober now,” I say, grabbing the empty bottle of water she made me drink on the car ride here. I’m not lying to her, the affects of the alcohol have lessened tremendously since it’s been a while since I had my last drink.

“Be safe! I’ll see you later,” she says.

“You too.” I walk up to the apartment complex’s front door, use the extra key my dad gave me, and make my way to the lobby’s elevator. I wave to CeCe who’s waiting on me to get safely to the elevator as I step into it. She waved back and begins pulling out of the parking lot.

I press the button “7” and feel the elevator take me up to the seventh floor. I find my dad’s apartment number, unlock the door, and walk in.

Luckily, no one is here to scold me for being home so late because Dad is at a five-day-long conference with Agent Rossi, and Jack is staying with Aunt Jessica.

I put my keys on the ring my dad has beside the door and kick off my docs. I notice the kitchen and living room lights are on, which is strange. No lights are on upstairs.

I look around, making sure nothing is out of place. Which is kind of hard since I haven’t been in this apartment in months. I freeze in my place by the couch as I hear something in the kitchen. Shit. Of course something like this would happen when I’m the only one home.

I sneak on my tippy toes, careful not to make a sound as I go to the safe my father has hidden behind a family picture. I pinch in the key, my birthday, and grab the gun Dad bought for me when I was 18. I’ve never used it, and never planned to use it, but tonight it seems like it could come in handy. I load it quickly and proceed toward the sound of footsteps and clinging in the kitchen.

Gun pointed, I sneak into the kitchen to see the back side of a man at the counter.

“Hands up!” I yell as if I’m a cop.

The man whips around immediately, obviously startled. I’ve caught him off guard. Good.

“Hands up! This thing is loaded, and I will shoot if you try anything.”

“Woah, woah, woah! Put that down,” he says, hands up and eyes wide.

“What? No. You can’t just break in without consequences!” I say, keeping my sim at his leg.

“Break in? Wh-”

Suddenly, I know where I recognize that raspy, almost high pitched voice from. I recognize the face too even though it’s changed since I’ve last laid eyes on it. “Dr. Reid?” I ask, baffled.

I see the recognition click in his eyes as well. “Wait, Jade?”

two

tags: @pauline5525mgg @theintimatewriter @lilibet261 @greysviolets @jazzymariexoxoc @one-sweet-gubler @thatsonezesty13 @necromaniackat @reidsprettygirl @awhoreforspencerreid @sebs-oxygen @yazzyu @crynroom @scarredelirium @lena-1895 @preciousbabypeter <3

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stellisketches · 2 years

Text

MCD Headcanons that have Nothing to do with Anything (part 4?)

Levin got his sex talk from a stoned camp-counseler hippie-elf who explained it as “you gotta plant flowers, not weeds, and… love trees. But the trees are also you,” and he was so confused he had to ask Zoey for clarification.

Zianna is a big lover of the Arts, and often took the boys to the O’Khasian Theater when they were young. It was one of the few things they all enjoyed together

Laurance sleeps naked

Once while he slept in the guard tower, Dante got frustrated that he wouldn’t wake up and pulled all of the blankets off him

There is a silent agreement to never discuss that morning

Dante has a very pleasant singing voice

Chad invented the saxophone, to which Vylad ‘borrowed’ from him and never gave back

In his defense he plays it pretty damn good

Ru’aun works on a six-day week schedule and has 366 days in their calendar with a total of 61 weeks

Zane used to give sermons every once in a while in O’Khasis, and was surprisingly good at it

Garroth always attended Zane’s sermons, because it was the few times his brother showed kindness, even if it was fake.

When he’s stressed out, Garroth’s immediate instinct is to find a hiding space and curl into a sitting ball

It’s gotten harder as he got older because he’s so gigantic now.

Laurance is always chewing off hangnails

Jeffory was really good at playing darts

Katelyn is pretty shit on the other hand

Levin also has a really pretty singing voice

Alina grows up to be really good at card games, a trait she unknowing inherited from Aaron.

Zane has tried to have Garte assassinated on two separate occasions, both of which he survived by pure dumb luck. Also Garte never even realized he was trying to be assassinated.

Laurance has a bar tab of over 100 gold ingots that he has yet to pay off

Nicole hates any temperature over 70 degrees (21 C)

There was a solid 2 months in Phoenix Drop pre-s1 where Zenix was paid in peanut butter

Laurance is a light sleeper

Inherited magicks are really up to chance, and they present themselves in different ways that can range from ‘that doesn’t even really count as magick’ to ‘omnipotent god’

Laurance is magicks-sensitive, however the only magicks he has is that he has distinctly better hearing than the average person

Zane and Vylad also made a bet as to what it was going to take for Garroth to figure out Vylad was gay. Zane bet that Vylad would have to look him in the eyes and explain it to him but Vylad held out a (false) hope he’d figure it out on his own.

That’s the only reason Vylad has yet to tell him.

Meteli is a lot more trade-and-favors based on currency than most other villages. Most debts can be paid in favors if someone doesn’t have the funds.

Also it’s pretty much the only villages where underling guards can talk shit to their betters without major consequence as long as they still follow orders.

Cadenza retained a lot of chicken habits after she turned back into a human.

One time she poured herself a bowl of dry oats and ate by bending her head down back and forth before fully realizing what she was doing

She cried for like five hours after that

Also she’s formed a habit of flailing her arms around when she’s distressed

#aphmau #aphmau headcanons #mcd #mcd headcanons #mcd dante #mcd laurance #mcd garroth #garroth ro'meave #zane ro'meave #vylad ro'meave

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trentshaw · 1 year

Photo

( timothy olyphant/aaron taylor johnson, cis male, he/him) — Look who it is! If you take a look at our database, you’ll find that TRENT JOHN SHAW is a FORTY-SEVEN/THIRTY year old CRIME SCENE CLEANER that’s been in Chicago for SIX MONTHS. According to the file, they’re a mutant on LEVEL 3 with the power of AGE SHIFTING. That must be why they’re COMPELLING and COCKY. If you ask me, they remind me of worn leather jackets with patches, bandaids covering bruised knuckles, the scent of cedarwood and spices. They are affiliated with NOBODY.

basics;

FULL NAME: trent john shaw NICKNAMES: tj GENDER: male BIRTHDATE: november 25th SPECIES: mutant AFFILIATION: neutral

personality;

ALIGNMENT: chaotic neutral ZODIAC: sagittarius MBTI: entp POSITIVE TRAITS: optimistic, funny, honest, confident NEGATIVE TRAITS: disorganised, painfully blunt, short-tempered, arrogant

backstory;

CHILDHOOD/TEENAGE YEARS:

trent was born and raised in ireland with his mother, jolene, and father, dickhead shaw.

he grew up in an abusive household which wasn’t easy, but jolene loved him fiercely. she tried to protect him as best she could, but that meant being on the receiving end of his father’s temper rather than trent.

he was a good kid who was more like his mother than his father. soft, kind, generous, and loving — all traits his father beat out of him.

school wasn’t easy for trent. he had bruises that he had to explain away to his teachers. he was lying from a very young age to protect his family. it was a lot of pressure to put on a kid’s shoulders. he did it for his mom.

as if the stress at home wasn’t bad enough, dickhead dad cheated on his mom and got another woman pregnant. trent was pissed.

baby ezra is born and trent is suddenly a big brother. he swaps between homes to spend time with his dad, even though he doesn’t want to. he loves ezra, though, and wants to bond with him. he likes his dad’s new girlfriend, too. she’s too good for him.

trent discovers his powers randomly. when he was a teenager, he had a dream about being an old man. when he woke up, he was 70 years old and looked like captain america joe biden. he kevin mcallister screamed and ran downstairs. his mom smacked the shit out of him with a broom and called the police. ezra was visiting that weekend and found it hilarious.

his mom found him someone to help control and understand his mutation. she was always doing her best to help him. she tried to get help for ezra, too. trent had a feeling there was no helping that little chaos kid, though.

trent beat up dickhead dad one day for yelling at ezra. he went into protective big brother mode. jolene had never been more proud.

he graduated from school at 16. he passed his gcse’s (barely) and went on to work at a local butchers shop. life was smooth sailing, if you didn’t count the things ezra got up to, and the trouble he caused within the family.

ADULTHOOD:

as he grew older, trent developed a taste for violence. the effect his father had on him growing up was starting to show.

killed his first man at 20. used the butchers shop where he worked to dispose of the body.

jolene died from a stroke when trent was 22. it broke him. he grew angry and vengeful. started fights for no reason whenever he was at bars. looked for trouble wherever he went. never got caught because he could change his age and look completely different to the man on cctv.

dad died. he didn’t give a damn. in fact, he celebrated.

life for the next few years was violence, alcohol, drugs, killing assholes he’d read about online and in newspapers. some people simply deserved to die. if the law wasn’t going to rid the world of scum, trent would.

he had his fair share of girlfriends and boyfriends over the years. none of them really meant anything to him. he was looking for company rather than someone to settle down with.

he moved around england. from ireland to london, from london to manchester, from manchester to kent. he worked various jobs to keep himself afloat.

met meghan when he was 37, had a steady relationship with her for years. she announced she was pregnant a few years later, then came their bundle of joy, dotty.

things were great for the first couple of years. they were a happy family and trent really did try to a better man. it wasn’t good enough, though. meghan left him for someone else. she left dotty, too. she hadn’t really ever wanted to be a mother, preferring late nights and partying.

it was trent and dotty against the world, and that’s the way it will always be. she’s everything to him. the only thing that matters. he worked his ass off to provide for her.

when dotty turned four, trent moved to the states. he knows that ezra was sent away by the family and is living somewhere in the states, but he thinks the likelihood of bumping into him is zero. besides, he loves his brother. it’s just his behaviour he hates. he can’t have that around dotty.

america can provide more opportunities for both him and dotty. he also had a friend living in florida who gave him work. trent worked as an alligator farm worker. it was great until he had a bust up with his friend and got fired.

moved to chicago six months ago with dotty. there was a job available as a crime scene cleaner and it pretty much called out to him. there’s nothing that can turn his stomach, and it’s great to have access to all the cleaning stuff when he goes on one of his rampages.

#abuse mention tw

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letarasstuff · 3 years

Text

Unbreakable Bond

(A/N): This is based on this post and this tiktok

Summary: A big age gap between Aaron's children doesn't have to mean that they are unable to form a strong bond

Warnings: Mentions of Haley's death and failed relationships

Wordcount: 1.8k

✨Masterlist✨

_________________________________

His life took turns Aaron never expected. It’s not the “Oh, mh, well that was unexpected”-type of turns, I talk about the “God played Cards Against Humanity with angels and decided to make it happen for someone”-type. But looking back he would not want to change a thing.

After Haley and Beth he was convinced that God, the Universe, something out there shared the opinion that romantic love isn’t the right thing for him and Aaron accepted that fact. Even more when he and Jack went into witness protection. I mean, when you are worried about the life of your family being in danger because of a stalker, you don’t think about the beautiful neighbor, who lives next door, right? Right?

Well, without going into too much detail, Hotch did think about her and she about him and vice versa. Everything went good until Aaron received the message that the team found the stalker and that it was safe to come back. He decided to come clean to his girlfriend. They talked about the possibility of moving back to Quantico.

In the end they decided in favor of the move, the final argument was the surprising announcement of her being pregnant. Hotch wants to raise their youngest where his and Jack’s roots are located. But he decides against taking a position at the BAU, instead taking a desk job in order to be more at home. He also has the opportunity to work from home after little (Y/N) was born and continues to do so until she is old enough to go to Kindergarten. Even then he takes two days the week where he stays home. Aaron learned from his decisions and mistakes he made in the past and wants to live up to them and be a better father and husband than before.

And Hotch keeps it to this day, six years later. It’s (Y/N)’s first day of school, while Jack just graduated high school and goes off to college in a few weeks. Even though they have an age gap from twelve and a half years, their parents are sure there are no other siblings with such a strong bond.

Ever since his baby sister’s birth Jack is her biggest supporter, protector and friend. Her first word was his name, though it was more of a “ACK!”, but that’s the best nickname he ever got. As soon as (Y/N) was old enough to comprehend the concept of movies, he introduced her to Star Wars. Since then lightsaber wars out of cardboard pipes are not uncommon. Last Halloween they even dressed up as Chewbakka and Han Solo. You get three guesses on who was who.

“JACK!” (Y/N) runs into her big brother’s room with an excited expression on her face. “Daddy promised to buy me a real lightsaber after I read ten books! With lights and sounds and all! Isn’t that cool?” Jack smiles. Aaron did a similar thing with him. For a certain amount of books he got a reward they discussed beforehand. This way he felt motivated to read and improved writing and reading skills.

“This is awesome. I think that means we have to go book shopping together, what do you think?” (Y/N) is not only the cool kid that has an older brother, she is also the cool kid, whose older brother has a drivers license, a car and a part time job. She nods with big eyes, speechless, because the offer sounds like heaven to her. Getting books and one on one time with Jack after he was really busy with school for weeks? This has to be heaven.

“Ok, then you put your outside clothes on and I’ll tell Dad about our plan.” At that the little girl rushes to her room, not wanting to waste any more time. Jack makes his way down to the kitchen, where Aaron wipes the table from lunch down.

“Dad, I take (Y/N) to this bookstore in DC and we’ll probably go eat ice cream after that. Is that alright?” Hotch looks up at his son. It still feels like yesterday as he told Haley that Gideon is a big no as a baby name. Now he is all grown up and just a few weeks away from the next big chapter in his life.

“Of course, just let me get my wall-” Jack cuts him off. “No need, I want to use this as a kind of goodbye thing. At least until Thanksgiving.” Aaron knows what he means. It’s his last day before he goes off to college and just a couple more until the first classes begin. The family still hasn’t told their youngest exactly what’s going on. Else she would refuse to go to school and go on with her day, insisting on using all the time they have until Jack drives off.

Two hours later the siblings leave the bookstore, both of them having a bag in their hands. Of course Jack's heavier, but both he and the cashier assured (Y/N) that they lift the same amount of weight.

“Uncle Spence will be excited when I tell him that I read Harry Potter, he told me so many good things about it”, the girl gushes. Jack nods, indicating that he is listening. Of course they also picked books that are not that advanced. Still, no sister of his shall grow up without knowing the beauty of the wizarding world. Also, secretly he is hoping for her to turn out as nerdy as he is so they get more things to talk about. His next step is superheroes, especially the Marvel ones.

They converse until they get to an ice cream parlor and order both their usuals. “Do you think you are ready for me to tell you something important?” The older one asks after they sit down at a table. (Y/N) nods, confusion taking over her face.

“Uhm, you know how I graduated from high school? I’m done with school, but I want to get a degree, but for that I have to go to college. It’s pretty far away so I can’t come home for a few months. But I’m back home when Thanksgiving is and also for Christmas.” It doesn’t matter what Jack says, a sad frown has formed on the little one’s face. “Oh. And after Christmas, will you leave again?” He nods and explains when he is off from college and when not.

“We can always skype and write letters. How does that sound? And when you get your first phone, we can even text.” That (Y/N) lights up a bit. For her first year of school she got a stationary set and is eager to use it to this day.

“I’m going to miss you so much”, she says hugging her big brother. Jack pats her back. “I’ll miss you, too.”

The goodbye the next day is a heartfelt matter. Everybody cries, especially (Y/N). She can’t fathom a scenario where her brother isn’t there for her all the time.

The following weeks are also hard for the family. The youngest refuses to sleep alone for the first three days after Jack’s leave. She is more closed off and mainly just does her school work or reads the books he bought for her. By the time Thanksgiving is only away for another two weeks, (Y/N) has read through all of them at least two times.

Her father already ordered the lightsaber he promised her. Unfortunately shipping takes several months, so the little girl still has to wait patiently for her reward to arrive. In the meantime she works on getting the next and she is already pretty close to the comic book collection she wants.

“Sweetheart, can you set the table, please? Your Mom will be here soon from grocery shopping and she will need help getting them from the car into the house”, Hotch calls for his daughter while stirring in a pot.

The little girl nods, putting her stationary set and pens aside to do as her father asked. She is in the middle of answering her brother’s last letter, telling him that she is now the one that usually has to read aloud for the class because of her advanced skill for a first grader.

Just as she sets the last piece of silverware down the doorbell rings. “Sweetie, can you please open it? This should be your mother.” Happily (Y/N) runs up and turns the door knob. Over the last few months she hit a small growing spurt and is finally tall enough to reach it without standing on her tippy toes.

“Mo-” She nearly chokes on her own saliva. The one at the door is definitely not her mother. “JACK!” (Y/N) runs up to him and jumps onto his leg. “Hey Princess. I thought now that you read your books, we need to hold the most amazing lightsaber fight in history.” With a mischievous smile he pulls two from his back, giving one to his baby sister.

It is the most epic fight in history between an elementary schooler and a college boy. They can only be stopped by their parents announcing that it is a tie between both of them and that they have to sit down, else the food gets cold.

The following weeks mostly consist of (Y/N)’s joyous laughs and cuddling with her big brother. She even insists on him sleeping with her in her much smaller bed. On his last night before going back to college, the little girl turns to him in the middle of watching her favorite movie in the living room.

“Do you promise not to forget me when you are away? Because I alway think about you and tell my friends so much about you. I told them you are a hero, my hero, just like Daddy. They wanna meet you because of that.” Jack has to hold back tears at her statement.

“I also think of you so much. All of my friends at college are pretty jealous of me having such a sweet baby sister. Maybe one time you can visit me and I can introduce you to them.” The thought of that makes (Y/N) smile and is a little consolation to the thought of her brother leaving again.

Aaron watches the interaction going down, happy to see the strong bond between his children, despite their age gap. This is nothing like he and Sean were and that is a relief for him and the worries he had in the beginning. It is a sign that he did do some things right as a father.

Taglist:

All works:

@dindjarinsspouse @big-galaxy-chaos @jswessie187

Criminal Minds:

@averyhotchner @mggsprettygirl @herecomesthewriterwitch @ash19871962 @ellyhotchner

#aaron hotch x child!reader #aaron hotchner #aaron hotchner x reader #aaron hotch x daughter!reader #aaron hotchner x daughter!reader #aaron hotchner x child!reader #jack hotchner #jack hotchner x sister!reader #jack hotchner x reader #x daughter!reader #x reader #criminal minds #criminal minds fanfiction #aaron hotch #x child!reader

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uncpanda · 3 years

Text

Back to the Navy Yard: Part 10

AN: Here it is! The Final Chapter of the series. This has been so much fin to write, and I hope you enjoy it! Instead of just looking at one moment, I decided to drabbles from several significant moments of their lives after reuniting.

Master List

The Wedding:

“You sure about this? It’s not too late to back out.”

You level a look at your dad, “Seriously?”

You gesture to your outfit, and he shrugs, “It’s just a dress.”

You smile, “It’s my wedding dress.”

“A dress is not a reason to get married.”

You take your dad’s hand, “I know that. But I never would have bought the dress if I wasn’t madly in love with him daddy. And I love him. I love him so much it’s crazy.”

Your dad scowls. It’s been a month since your kidnapping, (your original weekend plan had been met with resistance from the team) a month since you’d found out you were pregnant, and both Aaron and your father, had been reluctant to let you out of their sight. Even Jack had been attached to your hip, especially since finding out he was going to be a big brother.

No one else knew, but you knew they suspected. You supposed planning a wedding within a month was a pretty big clue, at least for you and Aaron. Dave had been kind enough to offer his home for the wedding, but you had declined. Instead, you’d decided to use your dad’s back yard, where you and Kelly had played as children, and where your mother had planted her garden. A garden your father had always kept up.

He sighs, “If you’re sure.”

You lean up and kiss his cheek, “I love you daddy. Plus think about all the grandkids.”

He snorts at that, “Jack is pretty big help with the boat.”

He offers his arm right as the music starts, and you take it right as the door opens. You smile at the sight that’s waiting for you at the end of the aisle. Aaron and Jack both look amazing in their blue suits, and their smiles are nearly blinding. And as you take those first few steps towards them, you’ve never been more sure of anything in your life.

Stillwater:

“So this is where you grew up PopPop?”

You watch as Jack presses his face up against the window of the car. He’s studying every inch of the town.

“Unfortunately.”

“Dad!”

“What? It’s true. I hated growing up here.”

You roll your eyes and you watch as Aaron smirks. You smooth a hand over your belly. You’d recently popped out a little bit, and people could actually tell that you were pregnant now.

“Is that Grandpa?”

You smile at the sight of your grandfather. You haven’t seen him in years, but he still looks good. He hadn’t been able to make the trip for your wedding, due to recovering from a hip replacement. So instead, you’d arranged to come see him.

Your dad huffs, “That’s the old man.”

Jack smiles, “He and I have the same name, right?”

Aaron’s the one who answers, “That right.”

He’s barely put the car in park when Jack throws the door open and runs to nearly hug your Jackson Gibbs. You watch from the passenger seat as your dad quickly follows him, to make sure he’s safe.

Aaron takes your hand, “It’s nice, isn’t it? Having a big family.”

You smile, “Absolutely.”

And with that you go and hug your grandfather.

The Move:

“I’m just saying there was a very nice house for sale right down the street from us. Our kids could have played together!”

You roll your eyes, and look at Ziva who’s smiling fondly at her husband. “The children can still play together Tony. They’re only a ten minute drive away.” Her hand goes down to smooth over her own protruding belly. She’s five months along and you’re six months and then there’s JJ who’s four months. The three of you have been instructed not to lift anything. And any time one of you tries to do anything there’s some sort of shout. Ziva’s already thrown a knife.

You watch as Jack carries in a box of his toys. You ruffle his hair as he passes and he gives you a grin. Like always you smile when you see the gaps in his smile. He’s recently started losing teeth like crazy. And your father has been playing the tooth fairy which means Jack has been making out like a bandit. When you had mentioned something about spoiling him, your dad had said it was part of his job as a grandpa. You hadn’t had the heart to argue.

You listen as your dad and Aaron bicker while carrying in the crib. It’s something your dad, Aaron, and Jack had made together, and it’s gorgeous in your opinion. And you knew they’d made Tony sit in it to test the sturdiness of it. You also knew they were working on a matching dresser. You’d bought the changing table and rocker.

There’s even more bickering in the kitchen where Uncle Dwayne and Dave are debating on how to set up and organize the kitchen. You exchange looks with the other pregnant women before deciding it would just be best to go hang out on the screened in porch.

The Maid of Honor:

“I’m going to kill Laurel.”

Aaron, Jack, and your dad are staring at you warily. “I love her and she’s my best friend, but who the hell holds a wedding, in New Orleans, in the middle of July! Add in the fact that I’m seven months pregnant, and I’m going to sweat to death.”

Your dad holds out a cold bottle of water, and you take it, and press it against the back of your neck. It feels amazing. You do your absolute best to spend as little time outside as possible, and you thank God that Laurel chose and indoor venue. You nearly cry in relief when you realize she’s turned the air conditioning down as low as it will go.

She laughs at the look of relief on your face and places a hand on your bump, “I can’t have my god-daughter or god-son boiling in there, can I?”

You hug her, and blame the relief tears on the pregnancy hormones.

False Labor:

Two weeks before your due date, Aaron stops traveling with the team. He absolutely refuses to miss the birth of his second child. He’d been there when Jack was born, and he was determined to be there when this one was born. ‘Your false labor starts two days before your due date. You’re certain it’s the real thing and you end up sounding the alarm. Your dad comes over to stay with Jack while Aaron takes you to the hospital.

It happens two more times, and always in the middle of the night. Eventually, your dad brings his pack, and his pillow and collapses on your couch. When you give him a questioning look he simply shrugs and says, “I’m sick of the back and forth.”

You just roll your eyes and go to get something to eat.

The Real Labor:

Your real labor happens in the middle of the day, a week after your due date. You’re home alone, officially on Maternity leave; Jack is at school and your dad and Aaron are at work. You don’t send out a text until your water breaks. You want to make sure it’s real this time. Both your dad and Aaron arrive at the house with sirens blaring. You sigh. The drama kings.

You say nothing as you toss your bag into the car, and slide in right as another contraction hits. You close your eyes and reach out to grip someone’s hand. When it’s done you look to see who it is; it’s McGee, and there are tears in his eyes. You wince and apologize.

Your dad rolls his eyes, closes the car door and simply says, “He’ll be fine.” Before telling Aaron to drive.

The Baby has Arrived:

You stare at your husband. While normally you find Aaron the most handsome man in the room, seeing him with your newborn baby in his arms, makes him the sexiest man you’ve ever seen. You adjust against your pillows, “Are you sure about the name?”

He nods, his eyes never leaving your daughter. Jack had gotten his wish for a sister, “I’m sure. It might actually make him like me.” He coos down at your daughter, “Your PopPop is a stubborn old mule. But he’ll love you.” As though Aaron, himself, isn’t stubborn. You roll your eyes.

There’s a knock on the door, as Jack’s head peeks in followed by your dad’s. You smile and wave them in. Jack runs to you. That surprises you, you figured he’d go to Aaron and the baby first. Your dad lifts him onto your bed, and he very gently hugs you. “Hi Marmee!”

“Hello my sweet boy.”

You comb your fingers through his hair, and kiss his forehead. He bounces a bit, “Do I have a brother or a sister?”

You look over at Aaron, who’s staring at the two of you with a smile. You nod, and he walks towards you, lowering the baby for Jack to see. He reaches out an strokes her cheek, “She looks like Marmee!”

You laugh, and look up at your dad who’s standing by the door, “Want to see?”

He smiles and wanders over. Aaron slides your daughter into your father’s arms. As always, he’s a natural. He’d always had a way with babies, kids, and animals. The only place he was lacking was with adults.

You watch as he bounces her her slightly, and you can tell, just like when he looked at Jack for the first time, he’s in love. You have a feeling the man is living for his PopPop title. He looks at you, and asks, “What’s her name?”

“Daisy Shannon Hotchner.”

He smiles, “It’s beautiful. Thank you for including your mom.”

You nod, “It includes Kelly too. Daisys were her favorite flower. I think she named every stuffed animal and babydoll Daisy. I thought it was a good way to include them both.”

Your dad clears his throat, “I think . . .it’s an excellent idea.”

“Can I hold her?” Jack’s little voice is enough to break you out of your thoughts, and your dad moves to sit on the edge of the bed. You watch as he and Aaron help Jack hold Daisy, and you can’t help the amount of love that fills your heart at the sight. Your little family is perfect.

Mom and Kelly:

It’s a pretty day. The sun is shining, and the only clouds in the sky are white and fluffy. It’s been years since you’ve visited. When you were a child, your dad would bring you two to three times a year. You readjust Daisy in your arms, as you stare down at the headstones. Your mother and sister’s names stare back at you.

You glance at your dad. There’s a blank look on his face for just minute before he bends down and replaces the flowers. He dusts leaves and blades of grass off the headstones.

You’re silent for a moment before you start, “Hey mama. Hey Kelly. Sorry it’s been so long, but things have been busy. I got married, his name is Aaron. And he’s amazing. And through him I got a beautiful son named Jack. And he knows about you guys. He likes to hear stories about you. And recently I gave birth, which wasn’t fun, but the end result is pretty damn. Her name is Daisy Shannon. Dad and I are doing well. He comes over for dinner most nights now, and he likes to steal Jack away to work on the boat. And when we go to the park, he insists on carrying Daisy. He even wears the Boba baby wrap.”

“Don’t tell them that! Your sister will laugh at me.”

You smile, and ignore him, “We miss you guys, and we love you.”

Your dad’s arms wraps around your shoulders and he places a kiss on the side of your head before stealing Daisy away.

You roll your eyes, stay a few more minutes while your dad tells them all about Jack and Daisy, before the two of you head out. You meet Jack and Aaron in the middle.

Jack immediately rushes to your dad, who scoops him up and onto his hip with his free arm. You go to Aaron, who takes your hand, “How were your mom and sister?”

“They’re good. We told them all about you and Jack.”

“We’ll have to go with you next time.”

You shrug, and look off in the direction they had come from, where Haley had been buried. The cemetery is peaceful, and as you walk through it, and back towards the car, you can’t help but think this is the most alive and happy you’ve seen your dad in years. It’s nice.

You get everyone in the car, your dad sit in the back in between the carseats, talking with jack while allowing Daisy to play with his finger, when he gets the call.He barely says two words before hanging up and saying, “I have to go to work. Can you drop me off?”

Aaron nods, “Sure thing.”

“And could I get a quick consult?”

You laugh, “We can manage that.”

And as Aaron pulls away from the curb, your little family heads Back to the Navy Yard.

#aaron hotch x reader #aaron hotchner #aaron hotchner x reader #aaron hotchner x you #leroy jethro gibbs #jethro gibbs #gibbs #dad!gibbs x daughter!reader #ncis #ncis reader insert #ncis imagine #criminal minds #criminal minds reader insert #criminal minds fanfic #criminal minds fanfiction #cm fanfic #cm reader insert #cm imagine #jack hotchner

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doctorstethoscope · 3 years

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Brown Bear || A. Hotchner x Fem Reader

Hello my loves, this is a double whammy, because it’s for @ssahotchswife‘s soft Hotch Saturday AND for @anxiousblanketqueen’s birthday challenge!

prompt: reading to your baby!

warnings: insane fluff, discussion of pregnancy, mention of morning sickness, injury mention, aaron hotchner being completely wrapped around a baby’s finger

word count: 1.7k

You and your husband hadn’t slept for more than six hours at a time in one month, two weeks, and four days, not that you were counting. Okay, fine, so maybe you were. But to be fair, it also had been one of the most incredible six weeks and four days of your life— the number of days since Alexis Haley Hotchner had entered the world. She was worth every sleepless night.

The past six weeks had been total bliss— both of you on parental leave, Aaron dropping Jack off at school every morning and then coming home to “his girls,” as he had affectionately dubbed the two of you. You’d spend the day together, getting to know the little girl who had stolen both of your hearts in an instant, and then Jack would come home after school and complete your family unit. He couldn’t be more obsessed with his baby sister, and it melted your heart to watch his little fingers push hair out of her even little-r face.

So when Alexis’s coos woke the both of you up at 3AM, you couldn’t bring yourself to be mad at her. How could you be, when she had come into the world and made everything so perfect? You sat up in bed to go get her, but Aaron threw a tired arm out.

“I got her,” he mumbled, inching himself up to a seated position. “You did the last one.” He says as he tries to delicately disentangle himself from you.

He stumbled out of bed and across the hall into the baby’s room. You hear him simultaneously from her nursery and from the baby monitor on the bedside table as he crosses to her crib.

“Hey, angel, it’s okay. Daddy’s here.” He whispers as he cranes into the crib to pick up Alexis. “Shh, daddy’s got you.” He says, hoisting her up against his chest and placing one large hand over her back.

She’s quiet after a moment, content to be pressed against her father’s chest as he softly bounced around the room to calm her. You couldn’t see her face through the monitor, but you knew her well enough to know that her quiet did not mean she was back to sleep— you were sure that when Aaron checked her big eyes would be wide open and staring up at him.

You were right. Aaron shifted so that she was cradled in his arms and he could see her face, very much awake and enamored with her father.

“Lexie, my little love, “ Aaron cooed out as he settled in the rocking chair in the corner of the room. “It’s not time to get up yet. Mama and daddy need a little bit more sleep to keep up with you and your brother.”

Lexie blinked up at him, unconvinced by his pleas.

“Okay, sweet girl. One story, but then you have to go back to sleep.” Aaron answered the question that Lexie couldn’t possibly articulate as he reached blindly for a book off of the shelf next to the rocking chair. She couldn’t even ask for what she wanted, but Aaron was already helpless to do anything but give it to her.

“Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see?”

You let out a contented little sigh that no one could hear. You had loved Aaron’s voice since the moment you met him, but listening to him read to Jack and Lexie was always special. He was softer with them, more vulnerable than he was with the team. You could hear his love for them in every syllable.

“I see a red bird looking at me. Red bird, red bird, what do you see?”

He’s so quiet with her, so gentle, and you can’t help but remember the way you stunned him into silence when you told him about her for the first time.

Aaron was away on a case when you found out, off in Michigan or Nebraska or somewhere else that was decidedly not your home in Virginia.

You thought about calling him, but you wanted to see his face when he heard the news. Wanted to be able to pull him into your arms and thank him for choosing you, for choosing to let love in again when life had told him over and over again that doing so was a mistake. You wanted to thank him for this incredible life.

It was late when he finally came home. You had tried to stay up, but the morning sickness had you awake early most days and you were exhausted. You stirred when the bedroom door clicked open.

“Aaron,” you mumbled out, not sure if you really said it or if you just dreamt that you said it.

“Shh, it’s me. Go back to sleep. Love you.” He said, already divesting himself of his suit coat and his tie.

“Turn the light on.”

“Honey, I’m alright.”

It was a habit the two of you had developed— he would never tell you if he was injured on a case, so you insisted on giving him a once-over when he came home, making sure he was all in one piece. Aaron pretended it was ridiculous but he’d never tell you how much your tender touch would warm him from the inside out, how it would bring him back to the bright and soft place in his heart that he saved for you, and how it would pull him out of the darkness he worked in day in and day out.

“Turn on the light, please.”

Aaron obliges you, flicking the switch as he unbuttons his shirt and tosses it in the general direction of the hamper. You squint against the harsh light after just waking up. By the time you’re brave enough to fully open your eyes, Aaron is at your bedside in just his boxers, awaiting his examination with a fond smile. You rise to your knees on the mattress, running a gentle finger over the planes of his jaw and nose before giving him a quick kiss. You missed him. You ran your hands over his shoulders and down his arms, inspecting his chest and finding only the regular nine scars.

“Turn around.” You tell him.

“The unsub confessed. I didn’t even draw my gun.”

“Well then this should be quick,” you quipped back, and he turned with a roll of his eyes and a smile that betrayed his affection.

As promised, he was completely unharmed, and he turned to face you again.

“Can we go to bed now?” He asked, moving in closer to wrap his arms around you, his hands settling on your hips.

“Aaron,” you said, raising your hands to his face and placing your thumb where you knew his dimple would appear at your next words. “I’m pregnant.”

Sure enough, your thumb slotted right in. He couldn’t bring himself to form any words, but his beaming smile spoke loud enough. You couldn’t help but match it. There was a long beat before he spoke.

“Really?” He whispered, after a moment.

“Yeah, honey. Really,” you confirmed.

“You’re sure?” If he wasn’t smiling so big, you might have mistaken his hesitance for fear. You knew better.

“I haven’t been to the doctor yet, but I’m eight for eight peeing on sticks. I bought every brand at the drugstore. So I’m pretty sure.” You confessed with a little giggle.

He’s kissing you before either one of you can say anything else, and it’s perfect. He’s home, and he’s here, and he’s perfect, and you’re going to have his baby. He’s wrapped up in your arms and you’re wrapped up in his and you’re pretty sure you could just stay like this for the next nine months until Alexis makes her appearance.

Aaron’s snore, loud enough to be heard from both the monitor and your half-opened door, distracts you from your reverie. You smirk a little as you swing your legs out of bed and cross the hall.

The book is propped up open against Aaron’s chest, his arm occupied with cradling your little girl and his other hand splayed over her slight frame. Luckily, she’s asleep too, and you begin your quest to remove them from each other without waking either of them.

Aaron, ever the anxious sleeper, wakes with a start as soon as all nine pounds of Alexis are taken from his arms. You shush him before he can say anything.

“You fell asleep, baby. Go back to bed.”

“Could’ve dropped her.” He murmured, not pleased with himself, and you let out a dissatisfied little tsk as you place Lexi against her crib mattress.

“You had both hands wrapped around her. You weren’t gonna drop her. She was fine.” You corrected him.

He rose from the rocking chair and tugged at your hand. “You coming?”

“I just want to look at her a little bit longer.” You tell him

“You know, you aren’t supposed to be awake at all. Sleep when the baby sleeps.” He chastises with absolutely nothing behind it, settling in to wrap his hands on your waist and tuck his chin into your shoulder.

You watch her for a moment, or two or three. It’s hard to tell. You could look at her forever.

“Thank you,” you both say after a moment, and turn to each other with exhausted little smiles.

“Come on, let’s get back to sleep before we get sentimental and weepy,” Aaron teases, tugging you back towards the bedroom.

“It’s a little too late for that, love.” You tell him as you climb into bed, scooting towards the middle of the mattress so you could wrap your arms around him and place your head on his chest. He just places his lips against your forehead by way of response, falling back to sleep before he can move away. You sigh that contented little sigh again, and Aaron’s arm pulls you in closer to him. He really had given you the perfect life. You couldn’t wait to repay him with baby number three.

#jtr23 #aaron hotchner #aaron hotchner fic #aaron hotch x reader #hotch x you #hotch x reader #hotch x y/n #criminal minds #criminal minds fic #aaron hotchner x reader #aaron hotchner x you #aaron hotchner x y/n #hotchner doesn't look like a real word anymore

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avenging-criminal-bones · 3 years

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After All This Time || Chapter Three

Aaron Hotchner x Reader

Word Count: 1659

Summary: You being a new recruit pissed SSA Aaron Hotchner off. You being smart enough to give Spencer Reid a run for his money pissed him off even more. Really, he just despised your presence. Hated your every move.

Until one day, he just… didn’t.

Warnings: panic attack, mean hotch, cocky reader at the end, this is kind of filler-like to keep the story going

TAGLIST

@kingofthetwats @wanniiieeee @uwu-sebastianstan @piggyinthesea @yoshigguk @scootankle @thatisthemagic @errorcosplay67 @ivebeenthinkingboutu @big-galaxy-chaos @rynfoxsleeps @phoenixsnape1 @mojofun @pachiibatt @enjoymyloves @thenewnormalforensicator

* * * * * Chapter Three As soon as the team went in the next morning, there was a call into the precinct reporting another body.

The police chief walked into the office that the BAU team was set up in and said, "Alyssa Wilde, age six, no connection to the other victims."

Remembering the note that had been appearing, you asked, "Was there any sort of note or sign left with her body?"

"Yes, actually," he shuffles through his pockets and hands it to Derek, who is standing the closest to him.

"Thanks man. That's all for now. We'll let you know if we need anything else." The chief walks away then, shutting the door behind himself.

"Derek, what did the note say?" JJ asked with a grim expression, hating that they were up against a child murderer. Everyone hated these cases. Everyone.

He reads from the note softly, trying not to be perceived as blunt or uncaring, "As we know, the unsub left the previous notes about God being with him, cleansing the Earth, and the children being impure. This note says, "You demons can try to stop me, but Alyssa was impure. God will not let you stop me, for I am doing his work." This could mean a few things since he is so heavily religious."

"Does anyone-"

"Reid. What school did the kids go to?" Hotch interrupts you, effectively ending your attempt at the same question.

Spencer looks at you slightly before sliding quickly into his 'remembering-detail' face.

"You know, Hotchner. I was about to ask the same question when you interrupted me."

Rossi and Derek both raise their eyebrows at hearing you speak up against Hotch.

"Well, Agent L/N, maybe I would't have to interrupt you if you would just learn your place on this team. Stop trying to pitch in where you're not needed. The briefing and the deliberations call for experienced agents." He looks up from his papers then and stares right into your eyes. "The only reason you're on this team is because you are admittedly a better shot than everyone else here besides me."

You look down, feeling the tips of your ears heating up with your anger. Emily tenses beside you when Hotch takes a step closer to you.

"Look up, Agent." Reluctantly, you obey his command and meet his eyes. "We don't need you on this team. I decided to be nice and gave you a spot because you're a good shot, but that doesn't mean I want you here."

You feel tears well in your eyes and glare at the taller man in front of you. Something flashes in his eyes when he notices that he made you so upset. It's not malicious though, he almost looks... remorseful.

Whatever.

It doesn't matter. He was a dick.

"I'm going to do some research on my own. If someone needs me just call me."

"Y/N, wait," you spin around to see JJ walking towards you, but you hold your hand up to her.

Shaking your head you sigh, "It's fine. I'm just gonna go. Call me later."

You don't give them enough time to try and convince you to stay before you're walking out of the room. As you pass the police chief, you murmur that you'll be back later.

The station is a short walk from the hotel that the team is staying at, so you use the opportunity for fresh air and kindly refuse the car that was offered for you on your way out of the precinct.

Once you get into the hotel room that you shared with Emily, you sat on the bed and fell back. The anger that had been building up inside of you finally broke out and you cried. You cried hot, angry tears, constantly willing yourself to 'toughen up' like your dad would always say to you.

Rubbing harshly at your eyes to try and stop the tears, you thought about the case and pulled out your individual case file.

Four kids now. All found in the same area. Three with notes. This unsub clearly thinks that he's doing God's work.

It reminds you briefly of a case from your hometown. It ripped through your city in a month-

Breathing was hard right now. The air wasn't coming in like it should. It wasn't. There was no air. Nothing. Your brother. Images of your brother flashed through your head as you sank down to the floor.

Your fists grip in the rug beneath the bed. You're hyperventilating. The door opens, but you don't look up, eyes squeezed shut tightly.

"Agent- Y/N? Are you okay?"

There are hands on your arms, gripping just a little too tight.

"No- I just. The case, my bro- It's just- I can't breath... I can't. I can't- I can't- I-"

"Hey, shh. You're okay. You- Okay. Just try and breath with me." The voice, which you distinctly pick out as a man's, floats around you and then you feel your hand being grabbed and moved to rest against something hard.

"L/N, can you open your eyes? Look up, Y/N."

"Look up, Agent."

Your eyes flash open and you jerk your head up to look at Hotchner. All traces of your panic were gone now, and you scrambled to slide away from him, yanking your hand off of his chest.

"I, uh. I'm sorry... for that. I didn't-"

"It's fine. Are you- you're okay?" His voice is softer than it usually is around you, but his gaze is still hard and uncaring.

Nodding you push yourself up off of the floor. "Why are you here?" Your moment of weakness was over and you're reminded of how he's been treating you lately.

"The team had been trying to call you for fifteen minutes. On both your persona and work phones. They were worried." You don't miss how he says 'the team' and 'they' rather than including himself in the worry. Momentarily, you catch yourself wondering why he was the one to come check on you.

He rises from his kneeling stance in front of your bed and reverts back to SSA Aaron Hotchner.

"The team has dispersed to their fieldwork for the day, you and I were assigned to work together," you hear the bitterness in the statement, followed by another quick jab at you, "I was really trying to avoid it, but I guess it's our lucky day."

Without another word, he spins around on his heel and starts walking out the door, leaving you to catch up to him if you wanted to actually be a part of the case.

"Asshole," you murmur before taking off in a half jog-half walk to try and catch up and look like an equal.

As you start to catch up to him, you call out, "I'm driving."

"No, you are not, Agent." Hotchner's words sounded final, but you ignored him and sat in the driver's seat of the SUV when the two of you approached.

You shut the door and held your hand out for the keys when he sat, albeit reluctantly, in the passenger seat.

"Thanks, Hotch," you wait for him to correct the nickname, and when he doesn't the smirk that's been hiding for a few minutes started to peek out in the corners of your mouth.

"This is going to be fun."

"Drive, L/N."

#aaron hotchner #hotch x reader #x reader #aaron hotchner x reader #hotch #criminal minds #enemies to lovers #cm #criminal minds x reader #jj #spencer reid #rossi #derek morgan

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path-of-my-childhood · 3 years

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Aaron Dessner on the 'Weird Avalanche' That Resulted in Taylor Swift's “Evermore”

By: Lyndsey Havens for Billboard Date: December 18th 2020

One day this fall, Taylor Swift walked into Aaron Dessner’s home to wish his daughter a happy 9th birthday - but that wasn't the only reason Swift was there.

She was mostly there to film the Disney+ special, Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions, in which she was meeting up with her primary Folklore collaborators - The National’s Dessner and Jack Antonoff. They had all gathered for the first time at Dessner’s upstate New York studio to play her record-breaking album live.

On the last night of filming the special (a process that was done while following CDC guidelines, with a limited crew and COVID-19 testing), Dessner recalls how he, Antonoff and Swift stayed up until 4:00 or 5:00 a.m. - drinking and celebrating the more-than-warm embrace Folklore had received. But in the days that followed, Swift ended up staying, and she and Dessner unexpectedly continued working. Eventually, they had 17 more songs, all of which became the sister album, Evermore, released on Dec. 11.

“Folklore almost immediately was treated as a classic or a masterpiece,” says Dessner. “It was elevated fairly quickly and had been commercially really successful, so obviously it’s hard to follow something like that up. But one of the things I love about Evermore is the ways in which Taylor was jumping off different cliffs. The ability she has to tell these stories, but also push what she’s doing musically, is really kind of astonishing. It’s like I went to some crash course, some masters program, for six months.”

Below, Dessner tells Billboard all about the work that went into his second album in five months with one of the world's biggest pop stars.

With Folklore a lot of the production and arrangements came from a folder you had sent Taylor. Did you continue to pull from there, or was Evermore made from scratch?

A lot more of it was made from scratch. After Folklore came out, I think Taylor had written two songs early on that we both thought were for Big Red Machine, “Closure” and “Dorothea.” But the more I listened to them, not that they couldn’t be Big Red Machine songs, but they felt like interesting, exciting Taylor songs. “Closure” is very experimental and in this weird time signature, but still lyrically felt like some evolution of Folklore, and “Dorothea” definitely felt like it was reflecting on some character.

And I, sort of in celebration of Folklore, had written a piece of music that I titled “Westerly,” that’s where she has the house that she wrote “Last Great American Dynasty” about. I’ll do that sometimes, just make things for friends or write music just to write it, but I didn’t at all think it would become a song. And she, like an hour later, sent back “Willow” written to that song, and that sort of set [things in motion] and we just started filling this Dropbox again. It was kind of like, “What’s happening?”

And then it just kept going. She wrote "Gold Rush” with Jack [Antonoff] and by the end there were 17 songs, and it was only a couple months after Folklore came out, so it’s pretty wild. Each time we would just be in disbelief and kind of like, “How is this possible?” Especially because we didn’t need to talk much about structure or ideas or anything - it was just this weird avalanche.

Considering how industry-shaking Folklore was, what pressure did that introduce this time around?

I think because of how we made it, it really wasn’t like producing some giant record or something, it still had this very homespun feeling to it. There may have been a moment or two when I think Taylor was wondering when and how to put out Evermore, but I think the stronger it became, and as each song came together, it just started to feel like, "This is a sister record - it’s part of the same current of creativity and collaboration and the stories feel inter-related."

And aesthetically, to me, Evermore is wilder and has more of a band dynamic at times. You can feel her songwriting sharpen even more on it, in terms of storytelling, and also just this freedom to make the kinds of songs that were coming. When she started to write in a less diaristic way and tell these stories, I think she found she had this incredible wealth of experience and depth to her storytelling that was quite natural. She could easily make these songs more reflective or blur the lines of what’s autobiographical and what's not in interesting ways. It felt like the most natural thing in the world.

Folklore was made entirely remotely, how did that process change for Evermore?

This was both. Some of it was remote, but then after the Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions, Taylor stayed for quite a while and we recorded a lot. She actually wrote “‘Tis the Damn Season” when she arrived for the first day of rehearsal. We played all night and drank a lot of wine after the fireside chat - and we were all pretty drunk, to be honest - and then I thought she went to bed. But the next morning, at 9:00 a.m. or something, she showed up and was like, “I have to sing you this song,” and she had written it in the middle of the night. That was definitely another moment [where] my brain exploded, because she sang it to me in my kitchen, and it was just surreal.

That music is actually older - it’s something I wrote many years ago, and hid away because I loved it so much. It meant something to me, and it felt like the perfect song finally found it. There was a feeling in it, and she identified that feeling: That feeling of... “The ache in you, put there by the ache in me.” I think everyone can relate to that. It’s one of my favorites.

Did you watch the Disney+ special?

I’m not a big fan of watching myself - but I did watch it, and I thought it was beautiful. It’s funny, because it was very DIY in a sense; a tight little small crew was there to do it, nobody was styling us or fixing our hair or anything like that, it’s very authentic. I rehearsed a little bit before, but both of us - Jack and I - were pretty much figuring it out as we went.

And I think the nice thing is that all of the songs could work like that, and that’s partly a testament to the strength of the album. Without big production tricks or backing vocals or anything like that, the songs stand up, and Taylor just sang the crap out of them. And hanging out with them was so much fun. They’re kind of like siblings almost; they’ve known each other a long time, there’s this quick humor between them.

Would you like to do something like that again with Evermore?

I don’t know if you can recreate exactly what we did with Folklore. I haven’t actually talked to anyone about that. But to me, the songs of Evermore would be even more fun to play, because more of them feel like band songs. But, that being said, I won’t be disappointed if we don’t - there is no plan afoot right now to do that.

During an interview on Jimmy Kimmel Live! Jimmy asked Taylor about the rumors behind Woodvale and if there’s a third album coming, to which she said she’s exhausted. How are you feeling energy wise?

I think we both feel like it was Mission: Impossible - and we pulled it off. I imagine that we’ll make music together in some ways forever, because it was that sort of chemistry, and I’m so thankful and grateful for what happened, but I think there’s a lot there. It’s not just the two albums, there’s also bonus tracks, and two of my favorite songs aren’t even on this record. We’re not pouring into another one now.

I’m going to finish the Big Red Machine album - I was really very close to finishing it when all of a sudden the Folklore and Evermore vortex opened up, and actually Taylor has been really helpful and involved with that as well - and The National is starting to talk about making music, and I think she’ll probably take a break. But I’m so excited for any future things we might do -- it’s definitely a lifelong relationship. And I’d say the same for all the people who worked on these records, including my brother and everybody who contributed. It’s a really special legacy.

#lmao #I love that she just sends him on a press tour while she chills somewhere #honestly - I'd do that too if I was her #=)#billboard #interview #Aaron Dessner #taylor swift #folklore album #evermore album #evermore era #folklore era #songwriting

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anotheronechicagobog · 3 years

Text

Rangers, Lead the Way

Written by: @anotheronechicagobog

Warnings: Swearing, canon compliant violence, I had to use a lot of material from the actual episode, mention of domestic abuse

tagging: @detectiveinchicago

A/N: So, this is a new series. Basically, OA Zidan (FBI), Jay Halstead (Chicago PD), and Kenny Crosby (FBI: Most Wanted) all went to Ranger training together and kept in touch, something that was useful when they couldn’t be the one to keep their ‘partner’ safe and need to call one of the others for assistance when their ‘paartners’ are temporarily working with another member of the trio.

OA wasn't a name that he'd heard in a long time. They weren't in the same unit but they were in Rangers training together. Jay was one of the only two people there who didn't have it out for him solely because of his religion, while he was shocked to find a Muslim among the ranks at first, he quickly got over it. Not only did he trust that his superiors wouldn't let a terrorist into the army at all, let alone Ranger training, but OA was a U.S. citizen, and had a very personal hatred for everyone who sullied the name of Islam and used it for violence and their own personal gain. So he and Kenny Crosby befriended OA despite the shock and ignorance from their brothers and sisters in arms. They studied together, trained together, ate together, and bunked together. When they'd all been given different assignments they made sure to stay in touch. And they continued to call, email, and text each other after they'd all been discharged.

When Hailey got temporarily assigned to New York Jay was... Well, it's hard to describe how he felt. It was such a nightmarish combination of devastated, terrified, and heartbroken. It was like an icy hand had enclosed around his throat and was slowly squeezing, painfully closing his throat, all while his heart was being dissected out of his chest by another. Not only was he reliving one of the most traumatic moments of his life all over again, but Hailey was going to be in the field without him. She was going to be in danger without him there to watch her back.

And since Hailey was amazing, she could tell just by looking at him that his mind was dropping down into a dark place faster than Alice tumbled into Wonderland. "It's just temporary. And I'll be okay, Jay."

"Hailey..."

"I'm going to put in my time and come back as quickly as possible. It's okay. It's all going to be okay." Hailey's words didn't reassure him in the slightest. How could they, when they didn't even reassure Hailey?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Special Agent Zidan."

"Hey OA, it's Jay."

"Hey man, how are you?"

"Honestly, not great."

"What's wrong?"

"My- uh my partner..."

"Hailey Upton."

"Yeah. She's getting detailed out to the FBI for a bit. I found out that she's getting assigned to your unit."

"That makes sense, my partner's doing a UC detail right now, we'll probably be partnered together."

"OA... Watch out for her. Please. She is strong and more than capable of defending herself, and you quite frankly, but- she's my- I..."

"Don't worry, Jay. I'll have her back. She'll make it back to you."

"Thank you. Seriously, you have no idea how much this means to me."

OA looked at the now-empty desk that had been causing his heart to ache at the sight of it. His shoulder sagged at the pain that was pulling in his chest, the dark fog that filled his mind whenever he started to think, started to wonder, caused his head to throb. "Actually, I know exactly how you feel."

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"You will be partnered with Agent Zidan."

"Hi, I'm OA."

"Hi. Hailey."

"Nice to meet you."

"You too."

"Listen up, everyone. This is Detective Hailey Upton from Chicago PD. She will be with us for the next few weeks as part of our interagency training program."

"All right, so let's, uh, direct our attention to the screens here. Found the body of a young John Doe in St. Nicholas Park. A hundred yards from Alexander Hamilton's house. Federal land, federal case- and no, it is not where Aaron Burr shot him. The famed duel took place in-- anyone, anyone? Weehawken, New Jersey. Kristen knew. Unfortunately, there's far less clarity in the present homicide case. Evidence of torture and abuse, the victim was brown-skinned, but there was no other evidence of a hate crime. So let's dig in, get to work, start filling in the blanks. Yeah? Go."

"You ready?"

"Yeah."

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"So, Chicago PD? Should I be nervous?"

"Nervous?"

"You guys have been in the news a lot and not for good reasons."

"Uh, yeah, we've had some issues, but they're being addressed. It's a great place. I'm proud to be a part of it. The next time you want to insult me, just come out and say it, you don't need to disguise it as a compliment. This car right here?"

"Yeah, sorry. I didn't mean it like that. It's just my way of saying we do things differently here."

"Mhmm."

"Just trying to keep it real." And keep you from getting hurt so that Halstead doesn't develop a full head of grey hair. "So, you spend much time in New York?"

"Nah, first time here."

"Any early observations?"

"Pizza's too thin. It's like a cracker with sauce on it. Just trying to keep it real."... Okay, so maybe it would've been nice if Jay had warned him that she had an axe to grind, but he could make do.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"If I hear you're harassing any more immigrants, I'm gonna come back here, and I'm gonna break your arm. Do you understand?"

"Yeah."

"Good."

"I forwarded Kristen the pictures of Aman. She'll get us a street block number based on the license plates in the background."

"Just like that, huh?"

"The FBI, Upton. Our tech resources are pretty sick. Look, it's not a big deal, but now that you're working with us, just try and be a little bit more careful. If that guy Prichard calls the Bureau complaining that you threatened to use force..."

"Look, man, I don't need a lesson on how to talk to people, all right?"

"Hey, hey, hey. Don't get me wrong. I have no problem with someone breaking that idiot's arm, it's just... It's just that the Bureau is hardcore, and they take that stuff really seriously."

"You're right. I'm sorry. If he files a beef, I'll eat it and make sure you're clear. All right?"

"Appreciate that. But what the hell's a beef?"

"It's an expression."

"I'm kidding. Kristen said Aman's house is around this area."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So, Hailey is a badass. That was pretty damn cool to witness. Sidenote; Jay is going to murder him.

Hailey was fine, more than fine, she actually saved his ass. But that didn't matter, Jay had trusted him to protect Hailey and hadn't failed, but he hadn't done the best job either.

They'd been searching a house, and after coming down the stairs he completely missed an assailant in the kitchen. But Hailey hadn't. No, she saw him and got him out of the line of fire. He provided cover fire while she jumped back over to the wall at the end of the stairs. OA tensed, more than usual when he was in a firefight unless Maggie was- nope, not going there, the point is, he didn't miss the way a bullet penetrated the wall a few centimetres from Hailey's head.

"Halstead."

"Don't be mad-"

"Oh god-"

"Hailey's fine. One-hundred percent fine, not even a scratch. We just, uh, we got into a shootout with an assailant. He got a shot off close to her head. She's fine- more than fine! I swear! She actually saved my ass in that altercation! And I was covering her the whole time!"

"... That's it? That's a pretty normal day for us, OA. She's okay, you're okay... So, everything, is... Okay. And seriously, thanks again, man. I can't even begin to tell you how much this means to me. I know that she can take care of herself and the others around her, but it's hard when I'm not the one there to have her six. So I really appreciate that I know and trust the person who is."

"Well, I'm glad that you're not gonna come at me like you did when I stole one of the cookies your mom made from your care package."

"Yeah, we wouldn't want a repeat of that."

"Plus, I know how it feels to... Not know. My partner is under right now and..."

"You're going out of your mind?"

"More than you can believe. I can't eat or sleep, and every time my phone buzzes I think it's a death notification instead of an emergency call from work."

"Sounds like you've got your own Hailey. You'll have to introduce me to Maggie one day."

"Yeah, I will. And Ken's definitely gonna have to introduce Hana. We have heard far too much about her to not even be able to put a face to the name."

"Tell me about it. Sometimes I regret our 'no search' rule, but then I remember how much we embarrass each other."

"By the way, thank you."

"Huh? For what?"

"For saving my ass back there. In the house."

"Oh. Okay. Cool. You're welcome."

"Halstead, how much do get shot at, exactly?"

"Why are you asking?"

"She pushed me out of the path of a bullet and when I thanked her afterwards she treated it like it was nothing."

"... I mean, there's not exactly a whole lot I can do about people trying to kill us..."

"Jay. Dude."

"I can try to stop being 'idiotically reckless' as Hailey calls it, but I'm not trying to be a hero or a dumbass or anything, it's just that... If it's not me getting hurt..."

"...It's her."

"Yeah."

"We're both whipped, aren't we?"

"Oh, ridiculously whipped. The desk Sergeant at my precinct is constantly making fun of me for it."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Just got ballistics back on the slugs fired at OA and Upton. They match the bullets that killed Aman, but get this; they also match the bullets pulled from a drive-by murder victim two months ago."

"Could they ID a suspect yet?"

"Yeah, arrested him too. Name is Santiago Gonzalez, known associate of the Latin Players. He's being held at MDC pending trial."

"Latin Players. That's a Chicago gang."

"Hmm, looks like they're expanding."

"So the Latin Players killed someone, they get arrested, go to jail, and the gun

stays on the street."

"And the new owner uses said gun to kill Aman, a studious Indian engineering student?"

"Right. What are we missing? How are these two murders connected?"

"Have OA and Upton pay a visit to Inmate Gonzalez. Maybe he can help us answer that question."

"Right."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"So this guy, Gonzalez, is originally from Chicago. Runs with the Latin Players, so maybe you should take the lead on this one. But go hard on him." Hailey and Gonzales were from the same city, same blood, this was her turf, and OA wanted to make sure that he abided by that.

"You want a reaction?" Hailey seemed to get exactly what he meant, what he wanted, but she also seemed hesitant, like she needed more than clarification. It was like she needed permission.

"A big one. Big enough to force him to call his people."

"I think I can do that." And just like that, she had a smirk in her voice and was walking ahead of him. OA could see the wheels turning in her head and a coolness to her features let him know that she'd come up with a game plan. He didn't know if he should be afraid or not.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Where's the gun you used in the drive-by?"

"I don't know what you're talking about." They were less than a minute into the interrogation and he was already annoyed. Why did these guys always have to be so smug? He resisted the urge to roll his eyes, and just let Hailey do her thing, only popping in to keep the flow going. "One of your friends used it to kill a civilian last night."

"Used it again this afternoon on us. Fired off ten rounds."

"Like I said, I don't know what you're talking about." OA had to hold in a sigh.

"You're staring 20 to life on the case you're riding. Give us the name of the person you gave the gun to, and maybe I'll be able to get you a reduced sentence."

"Get my ass, blondie." OA quickly debated the pros and cons of stepping in. Honestly, this guy would probably just make him angrier with his smug attitude and sexist remarks, plus Hailey wasn't even phased. She was still in control, and she actually seemed a little... Bored.

"I'm not a fed like him. I'm Chicago police."

"So what?"

"Means I play by different rules. Also means I know the names of all the shot callers in the Latin Players. Tomorrow morning, we're gonna do a warrant sweep. Means a lot of people you know are gonna get arrested."

"That's not my problem."

"But it is. Because I'm gonna make sure that they know you are the snitch who gave them up."

"Now, you know nobody's gonna believe that."

"Really? Because in my experience, pissed-off bangers don't do their homework, and if they think you're a snitch, you're a snitch. In the street, rumours become facts like that."

"I'm done talking."

"Alright."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"So you think he believed us?"

"I don't know. What?"

"Nothing, you just reminded me of my partner, Maggie, in there."

"Oh."

"In a good way."

"Then thank you."

"Can you cue up the audio feed?" The prison guard nodded back at OA and did as he asked.

"So where is your partner?"

"Uh, she is on an undercover assignment. That I know absolutely nothing about besides the fact that she is gone and unreachable."

"That's gotta be pretty tough."

"Yeah, but she's really good, so she'll be fine."

"We're up." The guard unmuted the computer and moved out of the way so that he and Hailey could see it clearly.

"Yo, just say the word, man. Chicago about to throw that heat."

"What are you talking about?"

Gonzalez sighed. "Police and FBI here sweating me, man."

"About what?"

"That piece that I left behind. I'm guess it's all connected to what happened on the night at Highbridge Park."

"All right, thanks for looking out."

"No doubt."

"Can you trace the number that he called?" OA was ansty, ready to get moving fast before their lead disappeared and from the honed in look in Hailey's eyes he could see she felt the same.

"Payphone up in Washington Heights." The prison guard was curt and efficient, exactly what they needed and OA was silently grateful.

"Okay. Thank you."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"I'm guessing that's his girlfriend."

"Hold on. I talked to her at the park, right before we found Ernesto's body." From the way her body tensed OA could tell Hailey wasn't happy she'd let this girl slip through her fingers. He could tell her that it wasn't her fault, no one was even remotely aware of this connection, but he knew that was pointless. Any passionate law enforcement officer would beat themselves over something like this, himself included.

"Ah, and we have a hit off of social rec. Her name is Harper Quinlan, 23 years old, last known address is 84 Groton Street, Queens, New York."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Why were you at the park?" OA sat across from the young woman, dead set on getting all the information she knew. Arman's murder was quickly dissolving into a larger more horrifying crime and he was worried that the poor man who this had all started with would be forgotten and he didn't want to think about why that enraged him so much.

"I told you before. I was walking."

"Or was it to recover the glove that Lucas dropped after he killed his drug supplier?"

"I don't know anything about that."

"We have video of you in the driver's seat of Lucas' Range Rover at Highbridge Park the night that Lucas killed Ernesto Garcia, so you are now an official suspect in a murder investigation. That means no more lying, no more protecting your boyfriend. You either cooperate with us here and now, or you go to prison."

"I'm not gonna help you ruin Lucas' life. I just won't. He's a good person."

"Harper, good people don't sell drugs or kill people."

"Yeah, you don't know him like I do. He's so nice, and... he's sweet... He really loves me."

"Lucas isn't who you think he is, Harper. Protecting him will only get you and more innocent people hurt. Tell me why you think he was in the park that night."

"I'm not gonna help you."

"Are you listening to what I'm saying to you? You're a suspect in a murder investigation here. Lying to protect him makes this worse. You're putting more lives at risk. Be smart. Tell me why you were there that night. Harper, you don't need to go to prison for him." OA knew he wasn't getting anywhere and was trying to think of some other- any other method- to try and get Harper to talk, when Hailey burst into the room. She looked calculated, like she had a plan or idea that needed to be executed exactly or else the worst might befall those she was trying to protect. Which, if he read her character right, was everyone.

"Unlock it."

"What's going on?" Harper was just as confused as he was, but he knew better than to show it.

"Do it. Pull up your texts."

"Oh, my God."

"What does it say?" Hailey already knew, that much was obvious, but whatever was going on needed to be as brutally real as possible to Harper, and voicing it out loud would drive whatever was going on home for Harper.

"'Return the product, or he's dead. You have four hours. Tell your man to meet us at the place we did our first deal.' Oh, my- oh, my God." Harper's sobs quickly took up the space of the interrogation room, it didn't matter that she hadn't seen her father in so long, losing him would devastate her, and the Latin Players knew that well.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Let me take a run at her. I might have an angle to play." OA watched Hailey carefully, trying to make out was she was thinking, what angle she could possibly have, but he hadn't known her nearly long enough for any of that. There was this... Knowing glint in her eyes, and a sort of dark confidence had taken over her aura. She was confident in whatever plan she had, obviously, he just had no way of predicting what it was. In that moment, OA could really see what made Jay all twisted over her. She didn't look excited to break the accomplice of a drug dealer, or eager to impress the FBI. She looked like she was ready to get elbow deep in someone else's mess just for the sake of protecting as many people as possible with her quick wit and razor-sharp intelligence. So he just inclined his head and got ready to watch her work from the other side of the glass.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"You're in a tough place right now, Harper. We have video of you at the scene of a murder, which makes you an accessory. You're looking at 15 to 20 years in prison. But if you cooperate, we can help you. We'll talk to the prosecutor, explain why you were there, help him understand the nature of your relationship with Lucas."

"What are you talking about?"

"I know what's going on. He hurts you, doesn't he?"

"No. That's not true. He's a good guy-"

"No, he's not. What are those bruises on your neck? You tried to cover them up, but I can see them. When you first met, I bet he was great. You guys hit it off, you had fun. He was everything you wanted. But then he started chipping away at your friends and your family. So you pop a pill to numb the pain and tell yourself everything's okay, just hoping that the abuse is gonna stop. Harper. It won't. I talked to your dad. He loves you very much. And he needs you right now. He's in a lot of danger. If these guys don't get their drugs back, they will kill him. The only thing that matters now is you helping us to find Lucas, so we can recover the drugs and find your dad." Watching Hailey in the interrogation room really was something else. From the slight waver of her tone, the palpable understanding in her voice that seemed to wrap a crying Harper in the first hug she's had in a long time, he could tell that she was exposing a pain-filled part of herself to this- this girl, this accomplice in drug dealing and murder. And still, she was able to remain professional and in control, and OA could honestly say that her incredible ability to do her job both made his heart ache for her and impressed him far more than he thought she would.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

They were in the surveillance van, waiting for Harper and the SWAT team to get in to place. What OA was itching to ask her was highly personal. He did not expect her to feel comfortable talking to him about it, but she'd given Harper some of her strength and after revealing something so heart-wrenching, the protective Egyptian older brother in him needed to make sure that she'd left enough for herself. "So, how do you know so much about abuse? I am sorry, I did not mean anything by that."

"No, it's fine. It's all good. Everyone becomes a cop for a reason. I guess that's mine."

"Uh, yeah."

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Don't forget, Harper. He wants the cash to get out of town, but we need the location where he first met his dealer. That's where your dad is." OA nodded along to Hailey's instruction, keeping a critical eye on the emotionally distraught Harper.

"Babe. They took my father."

"What are you talking about?"

"That guy that you deal with, they grabbed my father and texted me that they're gonna kill him unless we return the drugs that you took."

"Oh, no, no. I can't- I can't do that."

"They took my father!"

"Look, I feel bad, but they will kill me. Oh, Jesus, don't-"

"Lucas."

"Don't give me the sad eyes look."

"Lucas."

"I'm screwed. Look, I gotta look out for me- for us, you understand?"

"Look, I need to know where you and Ernesto did your first deal 'cause that's where they wanna meet."

"I just told you, I'm not going-"

"I will go! I'll call my uncle. He has a lot of money. Maybe I can negotiate a deal or something."

"I gotta get moving, all right, so give me the money."

"Where did you meet him?"

"Stay strong." Hailey could see her waver, could see her lose her ground and need someone to keep her steady. "Location first, then give him the money."

"Lucas. Lucas. Lucas!"

"I'll call you later on, all right?" Lucas, being the selfish douchebag that he is, grabs the bag of money and moves to book it, leaving his girlfriend who needs him behind.

"Damn it. Move in now!" OA sounded the call and immediately all agents left their posts and honed in on Lucas.

"Lucas!"

"You lying sack of..." Lucas, in an effort to prove that he really is a stellar guy, pulls out a gun and starts shooting at the agents, causing panic and fear in the civilians around them. Really, Harper? This guy?

"Get down! Get down!" Hailey pulled Harper out of the line of fire and pushed her to the ground before covering her with her own body, amazing OA with her selflessness yet again. You really picked a good one, Jay.

"Move, move!"

"Drop it!" Scola had joined them when Lucas went for the kill, forcing OA to do the same. Only OA was a good shot, though.

"Lucas! Lucas! Lucas! Lucas..." Harper couldn't stop calling for him, and OA was certain that the only reason she hadn't crawled over to his body was that Hailey was holding her in place. "It's okay." Hailey seemed to be stuck on repeat, comforting Harper. OA personally couldn't see how someone who had been abused would mourn their abuser... But then again, he thankfully had never had to suffer through that. Unlike Hailey.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------"Sounded like he was ready to hit the road, so I'm guessing his dope is close by. Nothing back here." OA went to the Range Rover with Scola to look for anything- finding the drugs would've been preferable, but as long as it was a tangible clue, they could call it a win.

"Yeah. There's nothing here either."

"Any luck?" Hailey approached them, her I-know-something-that-you-don't-but-don't-worry-I'll-tell-you plastered on her face.

"Nope. Nothing."

"You have the keys on you?"

"Yeah."

"Here, let me try something. Hop in. Shut the trunk." Hailey closed the driver's door, started the engine, pushed a button on the stereo and on the car door. A drawer illuminated by blue light opens, containing the missing drugs.

"I already pushed it. Nothing happened." Scola sounded mildly insulted, but OA just chuckled internally.

"Okay, Chicago." He was impressed, and he wasn't going to hide that. He was also going to give Jay a call later to tell him to ask her out already. There's no way a woman this amazing stays single for long.

"I have a CI who installs these things. Engine has to be on and doors closed in order for it to open."

"Okay, we got the dope. Now we just gotta figure out where to deliver it to."- OA

"Yep."

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"We have Lucas' texts from the phone he was carrying since Harper said he started doing business with the Latin Players about a month ago-" Kristen was leading their group of field agents and Jubal towards the front desks, explaining what she found, and while normally they would have totally enjoyed her explaining just how smart she is, things were a little time-sensitive.

"Yeah."

"We need to scrub that time period."

"There, on the 28th. There's a text that says, 'Meetings at 2. Let's do 9 instead of 8.'" One of the analysts pulled the info onto the computer screen in front of them, showing them the text records.

"'Let's do 9 instead of 8'? But the meeting's at 2:00. Is that some sort of code?" Jubal's mind was whirring away with Kristen's, figuring out exactly what it meant.

"Well, here's Lucas' GPS data from that day around that time." Kristen worked her magic so that Jubal could work his.

"All right, so from 1:37 to 3:12, he was in Brooklyn down by the river. Kris, can you zoom in? Get a more specific look at this. Yeah, over here. Can you drill down right there?"

"Okay."

"They met at 2:00 at a dock. Pier nine instead of pier eight. That's the meeting place." Scola voiced it out loud, like he was still in thought and hadn't had time to put all of the pieces in place internally first.

"There it is." Jubal's prideful voice made OA smirk.

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"We've got 67 minutes to get the drugs down to pier nine. Unfortunately, the guy we need to deliver the drugs is at the city morgue." Isobel voiced the dreadful obvious from her office, forcing them all to sigh and start their plan to catch Arman's killer from scratch.

"I'll go under as Lucas' friend. I'll give him the coke in exchange for Harper's dad." Hailey volunteered herself, but not with the same gusto she'd been working the entire case. Something was off and OA's 'spidey senses' were giving him no peace.

"No. These guys have done their homework. They're not gonna buy that." OA knew he made a good point, but he hoped that no one saw the way his shoulders went rigid.

"I get it, but I think I can pull it off."

"No, I agree with OA. It's too risky." Isobel agreed with him and OA felt like he could breathe again, he promised Jay that he'd watch her back, something he couldn't really do if he was watching her not with her. And if he were honest with himself, he'd become a little attached to her in the time they'd been partnered together, hoping that they would become friends.

"So we need a plan C."

"Let me do it. He's my father. I'm the one who got him into this awful situation. So let me do it. Let me do something meaningful. Something that will make me feel good about myself... Please. Gotta let me do it." Harper looked at Hailey, not even acknowledging the rest of the room.

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"You're gonna do great. Just follow the plan we laid out."

"He doesn't get the second bag until you see your father."

"Right. Got it."

"And if your dad's not at the meeting place, you tell the man to bring him there. He'll say no. You stand your ground." Hailey seemed to be offering more comforting advice.

"You have more leverage than you think. This dope is worth a lot of money, and that's all they really care about." While he seemed to be offering more calculated advice.

"It's okay to be nervous. They'd be suspicious if you weren't. You good?"

"I'm good."

"Okay."

"Okay. Here we go."

"Alpha team in position."

"Where's Lucas?" The gang leader, covered in tattoos was menacing as he approached.

"He sent me instead."

"And my product? There's only one kilo here."

"The other four are close by."

"Close by doesn't do me no good."

"Show me where my father is, and I'll get you the other four."

"Don't get cute with me, mama. I'll cut your throat. Go get my dope."

"Let's get ready to move in."

"No, no. Give her a chance."- Hailey was confident, but OA couldn't help but side-eye her. Wondering just what made her so sure.

"You trying to get your dad killed? 'Cause, that's what's happen if you keep playing."

"I need to see him."

"He's alive. I promise."

"I need proof."

"[whistles] Right over there, chica."

"Okay, we got eyes on the dad. We're good to go."

"Wait, wait, wait. Let's see if we can get him talking about Aman's murder. As soon as we see a weapon, we roll."

"Okay." OA knew that Hailey was smart, and she had been making great calls throughout this case, but he was still hesitant. An innocent man's life was in the balance, but he wanted justice for Arman too.

"Be a good girl, go get my dope. Do that, Big Papa walks. I'll go with you."

"So... So... How do I know you're not gonna kill me and my father once I give you the dope?"

"I don't kill civilians. Bad for business."

"You kill that Indian guy? He was a civilian."

"I try my best, but I'm not perfect, mama." Harper meekly retrieved the second bag from behind construction equipment.

"You did good, Harper." But 'good' wasn't enough for him. Suddenly a large silver gun was pointing at the middle of her forehead.

"FBI! Don't move!" OA lead the charge, coming out of hiding and announcing himself the second that they got confirmation that he murdered Arman they'd burst out of the van and beat SWAT to Harper, the Latin Players, and Harper's father.

"Drop your weapon now! Let me see your hands now! Put the gun on the ground! Step away! Put it down now!"

"Get on the ground! Get on the ground, now!"

"Dad!"

"Let me go! Dad! Dad! Dad!" Honestly, he didn't give the tearful father-daughter reunion much attention or thought, but he noticed that Hailey did, if only for a couple of seconds longer than necessary. He didn't know what to make of that, though.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Hey."

"I just filed my 302. Do you need help with yours?"

"Nah, I just finished."

"So, I have to admit, I wasn't so sure about you."

"Yeah, well, I wasn't sure about you either. But you're all right. For a fed."

"You wanna grab a beer?"

"I'm okay. You don't have to look after the new kid."

"I am pretty sure you don't need looking after. Come on, you saved my life. The least you can do is let me buy you a drink."

"For the tenth time, I didn't save your life. All right, let's grab a beer, but only if you tell me why you became a fed. I told you my reason. It's only fair you tell me yours."

"Deal."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

They didn't quite 'go out for a beer'. When OA heard Hailey's stomach throw a temper tantrum in the elevator he suggested going out for food that was accompanied by a beer. She'd agreed as long as they didn't go out for "crackers with sauce on them". OA had laughed, not even remotely or phased by Hailey's obsession with Chicago pizza. It's just another thing she shares with Jay. Besides, he wanted to take her somewhere else.

When they sat down Hailey looked around, taking it all in. Omar has been coming to this restaurant all his life. It had been open longer than he'd been alive, he'd even had his tenth birthday here. He hadn't brought Maggie here yet, not because he didn't think they were close enough, he just didn't know how she'd react to realizing that they are that close. "I hope you like Egyptian food."

"I've never had it, but I'm Greek and I know that there are a few shared foods and ingredients."

"Really? I wouldn't have guessed Greek from 'Upton'."

"My parents changed it when they moved here, their name was too difficult for Americans to pronounce, and there was some... Other stuff."

"I'm familiar with 'other stuff'. Do you want any recommendations or need me to explain anything on the menu?"

"You know what? You can choose what I eat tonight. If I like what you pick, I won't tease you for it the rest of the time I'm here."

"Well, for the record-"

"What record?" Hailey laughed.

"For the record, I am completely confident in my knowledge of food so I know I'll find something you'll like. After all, it can't really be bad so long as it's not non-Chicago pizza. Right?"

OA ended up choosing a dish called 'kushari', it wasn't like the Chicago or Mediterranean food Hailey was used to but she'd loved it. OA was smiling at her, proud of his victory, Hailey rolled her eyes, smirking at his impishness. "Tell me about your partner." The question caught him off guard and for a moment he'd felt a significant crack in his walls, leaving him exposed. Suddenly all the feelings he'd been pushing back since Maggie went UC enveloped and starting drowning him. Fear gripped his heart, haunting curiousity stabbed his mind, and loneliness hooked onto his soul. "OA? We don't have to talk about her, I'm sorry I asked, I didn't mean to upset you."

"She's one of the most amazing people I know. She's smart, strong, generous, empathetic, courageous... She's honestly one of the most amazing people in my life and I love having her as my partner." Hailey looked at him the same way his sisters and mother did whenever he spoke about one of the most important people in his life. Like they were able to listen between his words and decipher another meaning to what he'd said. But like his mother, his sisters always gave him hell for it, she said nothing. I couldn't even dispute it if she did say anything.

"She sounds badass."

"She is. What about your partner? Tell me about them?" He'd narrowly averted saying 'him', unsure how she'd react if she knew just how close she and Jay really were, and just how much Jay had told him about her. She got this smitten grin on her face, and OA knew that the roles were reversed from a few moments ago when he had that same smirk and far off look in his eyes. "His name is Jay Halstead, and he's an amazing person, except for when he's getting himself shot, the reckless idiot. He would rather get shot at than get a needle which rattles me to no end, especially because he's so much more kind and intelligent than he gives himself credit for and we need him you know, alive, but still, I admire him so much. He makes me laugh and he just knows how to get to me, you know? I would... I would follow him anywhere. Wow... What is in this food? Truth serum? I'm not usually that open..." It was like he could literally see a forcefield shaping around her. Shrinking in on herself, her face hardening, hastily putting a forkful of food in her mouth. She looked at the wall behind him, pretending to be interested in the decorations, trying to pass off the slight panic in her eyes.

"Maybe it's just my charming demeanour, or that I got personal first, really personal. Or maybe it's because you needed to tell that to someone you don't see every day."

"Yeah. Maybe." She still wouldn't look at him and a tense silence enveloped them until she took a deep breath and shook herself. Light seemingly went off in her head before she gave him an absolutely devilish smirk. "I believe I was promised your origin story."

"Is that what we're calling it? An 'origin story'?"

"It is now."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Halstead."

"Get your head out of your dumb ass and ask Hailey out."

"I- OA-"

"You won't regret it, Jay. I actually think that you will regret it if you don't."

"I just don't know if I'm ready to admit anything to myself, forget Hailey."

"When does life ever wait until you're ready, man? Neither of you work in a stable occupation, and even then the universe isn't exactly known for working on anyone else's timeline. I can literally feel you aching for her from here."

"But what if I'm not good enough."

"Oh, I've only known her for a few days and I already know that no one's good enough for her-"

"Damn have you adopted her as another honourary sibling? How many do you have now? And Hailey actually knows you've adopted her, right?"

"Not important, and don't try and change the subject."

"But if no one's good enough for her, then..."

"You're too hard on yourself Jay. No one's good enough for you either. Why shouldn't two people who are far too good for the world be together? You deserve happiness, Jay. You both do, and I think telling her that you're far gone with her would be a great start."

"Thanks, man. Really."

"No problem."

"... So you think that I'm 'far too good for the world'?"

"And now I'm regretting every word we've spoken." No I don't, but your head really doesn't to get bigger.

"Nope, no take-backs. You think that I'm badass and amazing."

"I never said 'badass' or 'amazing'."

"Jay Halstead- described as 'far too good for the world' by the humble and decorated OA Zidan-"

"I also called you a 'dumbass' but whatever, goodnight Jay. And seriously, ask Hailey out."

#One Chicago #Chicago PD #hailey upton #hailey x jay #jay halstead x hailey upton #upstead #upstead fic #jay halstead #OA Zidan #maggie bell #oa zidan x maggie bell #zibell #fbi cbs

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jade-of-mourning · 3 years

Text

theformat wrote, "im floating with the birds im talking to the weeds look what youve done to me"

in which i spontaneously take several hours to translate nate’s awfully punctuated commentary on dog problems into Comprehensive English Words. partially so i can write my stupid essay on it for fun. but yes here you go, 4.2k words from a 2006 livejournal archive that i managed to snatch out of two saves. here’s a link if you want to read it from the source, but i’ll have you know it’s a nightmare. early 2000′s nate ruess learn how to type properly challenge.

theformat wrote,

[@ 2006-5-18 18:44:00]

"im floating with the birds im talking to the weeds look what youve done to me"

Hi,

Sitting on my couch, watching ESPN. Damn, it’s good to be home. Things have been pretty crazy the last 6 months. As a lot of you know, we were dropped by our label — we went and recorded a new record, labels became interested, [and] we decided to release it ourselves. We went on tour, and now I’m [...] home for the next week: my first week off in six months. What do I do?

Well, my roommate and I got memberships to the YMCA down the street from our house. It’s an amazing place. Downtown Phoenix is pretty much an amazing place. It’s not like the rest of the state — speaking of which, I’m declaring war on Scottsdale, it’s the opposite of Downtown Phoenix.

Anyways, so I wake up at 9am every morning. I don’t know what it is, really — I’ve been a "pro" musician for about 3 years now, [and] we are supposed to wake up at 11 or 12. I know some dudes that wake up at 1, but no; since I’ve been home the last few days, I’ve been going to bed at 1 and waking up at 9. My roommate has a job, [so] I think it has to do with that.

See, there are 3 showers total in our house. I have the big bedroom, so I have the big shower, [and] since I’ve been off on tour and recording, he has gotten used to the nice shower in my room (Which is fine — anyone that’s gotten close to me knows I’m not too fond of showers, so it’s not like I use it that much). So every morning around 8:45, I wake up to my door opening and my roommate going through my room to use the shower.

You know what it’s like when you’re half asleep but you want to act like you’re awake so as not to freak someone out with all the crazy babble, but you just end up saying all the same crazy babble? I do that every morning. I turn and look at him and try to act like I wasn’t just dreaming about tootsie rolls and parrots that shatter like glass. "Hey [Roommate's Name], that was some game last night" [is what usually] comes out of my mouth — something to that extent — and I think he feels sorry for me, but continues to walk right into my bathroom, and use the shower.

At this point, I’m awake. I usually have to pee, and I have to then use his restroom. It’s a terrible swap, and it always ends with me wide awake on my front porch (har har) smoking a cigarette and wondering how the hell I’m gonna fall back asleep when the air conditioning is broken. Ah, what a wonderful life at home, [but] that’s the weird thing — I love it. Now we wake up and we go to the [YMCA]. We run, we play basketball, we jump in the pool, we play pool basketball, we get yelled at for dunking the ball. We don’t use soap before we go into the sauna, and the night usually ends with a poker tournament. This is the life I love to live when I’m away from the road. It too is the opposite of Scottsdale. It’s who I am, [and] it’s pretty much who I’ve become.

See, for the last 23 years, it’s been about the highs and the lows for me. I’ve got an addictive personality, [so] I stay away from a lot of things because of this; however, when I find things, I get generally excited. I go crazy. It’s all I think about and all I do for the next howeverlong. For the first 23 years, it was either talking non-stop or locking myself in my room. It’s either great or terrible; not good or bad. Dog Problems changed that.

Initially, Dog Problems was supposed to be that — the original concept of Dog Problems was to be 2 sides of music, the first half taking over where Interventions [+ Lullabies] had left off: "We'll be together in the morning…"

We weren’t, in fact. We were over before Interventions was even released. We were over two weeks after it was recorded, [and] I spent the next 2 years feeling terrible. We got back together… we broke up… we got dogs… we broke up… we got back together and got dogs…

I was still miserable, but I wanted Dog Problems to get me through everything. I wanted it to help me, not anyone else — just me. The first side was supposed to be me down in the dumps [and] everything that went down: how the two of us were dealing with it differently, [and] the second half was supposed to be a realization.

The first inkling of realization was a day [when] we were on tour. We were all laughing about something I’m sure Marko or Adam said. Here I was supposed to be depressed, but the fact that I can spend all of my days in different states with my best friends, all of us doing what we love — that was major! Then my mom called… I’ve got my parents! My friends! What else could I possibly need?

At that point, I felt as if a relationship in a Michael Bolton sort of way didn’t mean anything. It was the people you surrounded yourself with — those were the people that made the difference, and that was going to be side two. I was convinced that when I just closed my eyes and thought about the wonderful people around me, I was going to be great. Not good, [but] great.

I didn’t get that far, no. I got back into the relationship.

I was sure it was going to work. At that point, life would be perfect, and we all want perfection right? [But] things went right back to far from perfect. Things went to terrible. I couldn’t stop feeling sorry for myself, but I had a concept. At that point, I figured that even by singing and recording these positive songs I was going to feel better, so Sam showed me what was then just a short acoustic guitar version of Snails.

This was it. This was my first chance to prove to myself that life can be beautiful. The thing is, I had never been more miserable. I remember writing the lyrics to Snails: my roommate was at work, I was on the bed, on my night stand was a giant bottle of booze, and somewhere off in California she wasn’t calling me back on a Friday night. So I went to work, listened [to it] over and over. I wanted to get it right; I wanted to be positive. I passed out, then I woke up the next morning [with a] big headache (P.S. drinking is not really that cool; it’s cool when you condemn it for the first 22 years of your life, then it becomes not cool, then it becomes ok when you moderate yourself) and I started writing everything positive I could think of. [...] Snails was, in Sam’s mind, supposed to be a 2 minute kid’s song, [but] I wrote so much that there was no going back. I thought that was it — Snails solved all of my problems.

It didn’t get that far either. Nothing could shake the depression, [and] I really started to worry about myself. Here I want to feel great, but I only feel terrible, [and] a few months later it got really really bad. I had to go to my parents house that night, I didn’t want to be at my house. I wanted to feel like a kid.

It’s funny how we always want to be adults when we're younger. We want to drive cars, we want to have girlfriends. I still didn’t consider myself an adult — all I wanted was to come home, be tucked in, know that everything was going to be alright. I woke up the next day [and found out] she met someone new. I’ve got to figure myself out…

In the meantime, we've got 4 songs we are recording over at our friend Aaron’s house (he is an amazing producer and [...] musician, and his house and his roommates have gotten me through a lot of tough times. They’re some of the only people I know who would rather spend their Saturdays getting dinner and watching a movie instead of going to a party. I like that). All of this turmoil in my relationship was going on at the time, and I was trying to write side two [but] I couldn’t. There was more fuel to side one. These songs have to be done, so I wrote about what I knew, and at that point I knew how to feel terrible.

So much for side two. Dog Problems is going to be one giant mess of depression and "look what you’ve done to me".

Atlantic got those four songs, as well as a few others. They were not psyched, to say the least, but some people at the label actually cared about it enough to say "go record". So we were able to pick our producer, we met with a few people, talked to a few more. Things were looking up. Dog Problems was going to happen.

I remember meeting Steve McDonald at his house — Sam and I were excited to be [there] because we knew his wife Anna would probably be there. Anna was the lead singer/songwriter for a band we used to obsess about called "That Dog", her brother was one of the ten drummers in the world that I actually liked, so Steve couldn't be so bad. And he wanted to produce our record, so he had to be pretty cool!

He was just that, and more. Sam and I were eating every word that came out of his mouth. He had stories; he was young, hip, energetic, and yet very all knowing. We saw someone that was going to let us do whatever we wanted to do, and in the meantime he was going to make us laugh and make sure we didn't lose our minds. From that point on, I knew there was someone I could always trust. I made a friend pretty quick.

Things were moving forward. Steve McDonald was to be the producer. I hated Los Angeles so there was no way in hell I was going to record there, [so] we decided Palm Springs would be perfect. Weird, but perfect. I had a phone conversation with Steve that night and we were finalizing everything. I was going to call Atlantic in the morning and let them know just how everything was going to work, [but] I didn't get that far.

I was sleeping in a blowup bed at the house when my phone rang. I didn’t wake up and answer like it was my roommate and he was coming into my room to use my shower, [because] this call felt different. Right away, I was awake.

It was our manager: "You’ve been dropped."

When I heard that, the first thought going through my mind wasn’t "Oh man...how are we going to be famous now and make boat loads of money?" It was more like "fuck...but Dog Problems. We were supposed to go make Dog Problems."

The thing is, Atlantic wasn’t into Dog Problems. They were into whatever it was they thought we were. Never had The First Single made more sense — what was supposed to be a song about getting the band started and doing something with it had actually turned into a song about how stuck we were in the labels eyes because of the song. I was past that; we're proud of something we wrote when we were 19 and 20, but when I think of music, I think of progression.

I think of all of the wonderful records I had been introduced to when I had nothing to do riding in a van. I think of all of the new influences, all the instruments, all of the "How did they do that?" And I think of how much it gets me through everything.

Music has been the consecutive[ly] great[est] thing in my life. It’s been that one thing, and with Dog Problems, it wasn’t about "I want everyone to sing along because I can write a catchy song." It was about feeling. It was paying tribute to all of the bands that we obsessively listened to. It was for Harry Nilsson and Van Dyke Parks, it was for Jellyfish and XTC. It was our way of saying thanks for making our lives better, whether it be lyrically or musically. It was never about being something, being told something, and sticking to something. It was an adventure, for the artist and for the listener.

[And] they didn't get that. They wanted the old record, the old songs, just with different words and a few different chords here and there. They didn’t care about Snails or Dog problems [or] what it meant to write those songs. They knew it wasn't going to be huge; the guitars were not big enough (if big guitars are your thing that’s fine, it’s just not really our thing right now); it wasn’t going to be competitive, and so they dropped us. And rightfully so: we weren’t going to change, and obviously the major label business is never going to change, [so] now it comes down to who goes down first. And we weren’t ready to go down.

Sam and I had conversations about it, whether the business end of things have been fucking with us so much that we'll never be sane enough to just enjoy it. We thought about getting out — it wasn’t [be]cause we hated each other, or the songs; it was because we hated the business.

Steve called to let us know that he was still onboard, label or not, [and] we let him know we were still on board. We were going to make this record, [and] I was going to feel great! But the record was going to cost something. How could we afford it?

We were lucky that we had a management company like Nettwerk. Not only are they the most forward-thinking music business people around, [but] they’re also (for the most part) Canadian. Oh, and they care a shit load about the music we make. They could have waited for the ship to sink, but they told us they would pay for the record if need be. Fortunately, we were able to get money for getting dropped — Atlantic actually paid us to leave, so we could afford the recording ourselves. The only stipulation was that it had to be done quicker, and when you want something quick, you have to go to the "right here, right now" capitol of the world: Los Angeles. I was a little irked at the thought at first, then Steve said it was his personal goal to make LA a wonderful city for me. Like I said, I would jump off a cliff if Steve said it was the best way to get coffee, but I wasn’t jumping off of cliffs. I was too excited to make Dog Problems, [so] LA it was.

Sam and I moved to the "Silver Palace" in Silverlake California in the middle of December. We found an amazing studio in Burbank, California and an amazing engineer in Ken Sluiter, and our goal was to just do everything free from a record label and someone constantly messing up the recording process by saying things like "that’s not high octave enough". The only pressure we had at all was from our manager saying "You have a tour you accepted in March, [so] get it done by then.” Other than that, it was me, Sam, Steve, and Ken working 13 hours a day for 6 days a week.

It became our lives we were putting so much of ourselves into. Everyone that worked and played on the record was the same way when they were there contributing. I would leave the studio at 2 in the morning and wake up at 10 to be at the studio by 11. There was no free time — the four of us were so invested in this. We all bought into the concept.

In the meantime, things outside of the studio were getting interesting. We had a lot of labels calling and constantly asking about it. During one week of recording, I remember at least 3 different label people coming down to the studio. Our minds weren’t made up as to what we were doing with the record once it was recorded — all we wanted to do was finish it — but we kept our options open and let people sit in the big chair and listen to what we had been working on. The response was overwhelmingly positive, but we didn’t really think about it too much beyond the compliments we were receiving. Sam and I got used to LA — I was 10 minutes away from where I had been the previous summer when I was back "on" in my “on and off" relationship. I was ten minutes from her, she was calling every day, I was singing about it… but how was it not getting to me? Why did I not care?

My phone was off. I woke up in Silverlake one morning and started wondering why for the last month I had a smile on my face. Sure, I was down at times, but the thing that had been bringing me down for 3 years was now the last thing on my mind. Apparently, it had been that way for awhile. Something that took 3 years to get over… I was finally just okay with it. No big realization — just the fact that things happen. People make mistakes. And I came out of it alright. I was good; not great… I was good, and that felt good.

I wasn’t looking for great anymore. I was okay. The last song on Dog Problems is all about that. Here, this record was supposed to be the downs, and the ups, and it ended with the middle: the realization that I don’t need to be talking; I don’t need to be locked in my room — I need to enjoy what’s going on around me. And if things go wrong, they go wrong. There’s always tomorrow.

Dog Problems means so much to me in so many different ways. I’ve never been more proud of anything in my life. I cried so many times during the making of the record. All the money I had spent on therapy, and all I had to do was go make a record, realize that I’m alright, and realize that I made something that I’ll forever be proud of.

Shit… the record was supposed to be about how California can change you for the worse, [but] it played a huge part in doing the opposite!

So as we were putting the finishing touches on the record (all our friends came in and recorded! A ton of people we admired came and worked on the record! All of their responses were so positive that it's hard not to get an ego about it. These are the people I worship. They’re the ones I wanted to pay tribute to, and they think we've made something unique and special. It’s like Michael Jordan telling you that you have a nice jump shot (no more sports references… I swear I’m done)) and we started to think about what we were going to do with it. How we were going to release it. Labels were getting pretty into it, and we knew we would have to make a decision soon.

After much debate and discussion, we decided that the record was something we had made completely on our own, so why not release it completely on our own? Nettwerk was going to take care of the distribution so it would have a major label distro. It would be inside all of the Best Buys; what more did we want? We didn’t want a big fat check — we did that last time. It made us miserable, and nothing came out of it. Barely anyone at the labels helped us, we weren’t making music videos, our songs weren’t on the radio, so why would we take their criticism? After all, everything that we’ve done — any success we’ve had is from being real people who make music. From showing up to play, from 3 years on the road.

On Interventions [+ Lullabies], there might have been an Elektra logo on the back of the record, but it ended right there. We were the ones SHOWING people who we were. I wouldn’t have it any other way — no one knows us better than ourselves, so why not release it ourselves? To me, it’s not only a testament to the hard work we put into the band (Mike, Don, Marko, Toco, everyone else involved in putting these songs to life — you guys are the best thing we have. It’s pretty special when your best friends are some of the most talented musicians), but I really feel like the people who come to our shows are such good people that they don’t give a fuck what label it’s on.

They are there because we are doing something positive, and because we care about them as much as they care about us. So for the time being we've said "fuck the middleman": we're the only people we can blame at this point. I’m so tired of even talking about major labels and the split and everything like this. The music is the only thing I care about. Dog Problems is the only thing I care about, so why let someone else ruin it?

The Vanity Label was born.

The record got finished. We had no time to rehearse, and we had to go right back out to tour. Our first show before the Motion City Soundtrack tour was in Nashville — I remember the last time we were in Nashville, there were about ten kids. Reuben’s accomplice kept asking them why they hate whales, so we figured why not go there and get some of the rust out of the way. After all, we haven't toured in a year so there should be like 3 kids there; we can mess up if need be.

Unfortunately, we were not allowed to mess up. On a Sunday night in Nashville, with Ted Leo playing across the street (I <3 Ted), our first headlining show outside of Arizona in almost a year was over sold out. What the fuck happened?

We thought we were going to have to play for another 3 years just to get back to where we were when we left, and yet it’s sold out on a Sunday night? It didn’t end there either — the whole tour went like that… night after night ("nite after nite?"). I couldn't believe it. As if having Dog Problems wasn’t enough, now we have people showing their support in the most positive way: coming to the shows, being there from the only thing they knew before. Those two months were such good months. It was the last thing I expected. Thanks so much to all the bands that played with us, and thanks so much for everyone that came to the shows and sang along. We'll be back in July.

In the meantime, things were going great on the Vanity Label front. Business actually felt natural. We are shooting a video with the directors we had always dreamed of doing a video with (it won’t be serious...no pouty face). There were magazines like AP and online magazines like AP taking notice, supporting the whole idea and concept. We actually took press photos. I’ve never been through any of this before, it’s exciting. I don’t think it’s going to change who we are, not one bit, but it’s still exciting to see people who can help out actually help out.

So where does that leave me now? Sitting on my bed. I’ve rambled for hours, the air still doesn't work, and I’ve been told that Dog Problems (something that isn't supposed to come out till July) has been leaked. Not the best news when you just got out of the pool, but it happens. I freaked out at first — I thought I was going to lock myself in my room. After all, this is something that we spent over two years making. It’s something that you have to take the time… listen to in headphones… play loud… listen to in order of the tracks… the artwork… Sam did the best artwork he has ever done. The packaging is something we paid extra for because Sam’s concept was so brilliant, and now… it’s leaked on the internet? I was locking my door, then our manager called.

"Hello?"

"We're releasing it on the website today."

"Wow."

So, here goes. You’ve read enough. I shouldn’t have to go on about it anymore, but I will say, if you wanna wait for the full hard copy release then do so. It’s July 11 — we are gonna be touring right after that — but if you want to get it now,.please do it by purchasing it right here. We released it, it’s our money, it’s our little baby — you should take the time to listen to it all the way through, free of distraction. You should turn the songs into your own. It’s an adventure, and it’s something that we put everything we have into; and if anyone deserves it first, it’s you guys who have been here with us all along.

Without further ado...

"Dog Problems"

- Nate

#dog problems #the format #nate ruess #basically: dog problems; a lyrical & musical & emotional masterpiece #i honestly feel like i don't even need to write that essay anymore wtf #4.2k words baby that took me ages to edit bc he has the WORST typing habits #every half statement is interspersed with ellipses and there are no apostrophes and everything was no caps lmaooo #moving on #this is absolutely my favorite album ever and holy shit #finally reading this post in its entirety gave me so much more insight it's wild #i'm like so fucking emotional help jhfhbjgfhsdkg #i'm just glad he's doing alright now and having a good time even if music isn't a big part of his life anymore #and i also feel like i understand the breaking up of fun. a lot more as well #hell i just really understand nate ruess in general a lot more and it's really nice #bc he's been my favorite artist for a while and i know a lot of people shit on him for his personality but like. fuck off people are people #and u know. if work permits is my favorite song so hearing shit about it makes me happy #truly makes me appreciate the album more than i already did #and makes me get why it's the only part of his discography he still actually likes #even though OBJECTIVELY SPEAKING they are all Excellent but okay then nate

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teamhappyme · 3 years

Text

a series of promising events (1/5)

aaron hotchner x female! reader

word count: 7.9k :)

a/n: hello hello hello! this is my first hotch fic, and the first of three parts (edit: it’s actually 5 now lolol). it’s going to cover 8 (maybe 9?) events over the course of several years, so it needed to be broken up in the most rational way possible. this is my baby, and has been in the editing process with my lazy brain since september. please, please, please, let me know if the timeline or anything is confusing to you! i have a tendency to under explain things (as my profs will testify to), and i don’t want y’all to be confused. i hope whoever stumbles across this enjoys!

also, big shoutout to @winterscaptain, you are a gift to the world, tali. i am in love with the ajf universe, and that shit inspired me to polish this piece up for the tumblr verse to see.

alright friends, here we go.

link to part 2: here

****

June 2005

You wouldn’t forget your first day in the BAU for as long as you lived. It was forever ingrained in your memory, the good, bad, and embarrassing moments all stored away. Stored away that is until Derek Morgan decided to dredge it back up as you passed your six month mark on the job.

Derek, Prentiss, Reid and yourself were finishing up paperwork in the bullpen after an unusually slow friday. You were usually the first one done, earning a groan from the doctor across from your desk. They all envied your English degree and professional writing skills.

“Hey bobo,” The nickname Derek had assigned to you was named after your alma mater, and extremely annoying. “Remember your first day, when I tricked you into doing Prentiss and my paperwork for almost two weeks?” You shook your head, not having to look at Morgan to be able to hear the smirk in his voice. “Do you think I could trick you again?”

7:47. Thirteen minutes earlier than you needed to be. Yet the room full of agents you were supposed to join was already filled. You liked these people already, they were punctual and functioned in the morning.

You pushed one of the glass doors open with your ballet flat, juggling your box of office supplies while keeping your crossbody balanced on your shoulder. The sound of fingers pounding on keyboards, phones ringing on loop welcomed you into the BAU. Along with a shove to your back, causing you to lunge forward. You felt something cold run down your back, cursing yourself for wearing a white blouse.

“Are you alright?” You looked up to find a tall mop of brown hair and big brown eyes looking down at you. “Well, I’m a little damp.”

He nodded while looking at your box full of sticky notes and pens. “You must be y/n l/n. I’m Dr. Spencer Reid. We’ve been taking bets on what time you’d arrive. And you beat us all with your extreme punctuality.” You laughed. “Sorry to let you down. It’s nice to meet you, Dr. Reid.” You extended your hand for him to shake, but he just stared at your extended limb.

“Yeah, he doesn’t do that sort of thing.” The new voice came into view, shaking your hand that was meant for Reid. He was tall like Spencer, but was lean with a smile on his face. Confident. “I’m Derek Morgan. When JJ told us the new recruit graduated with an english degree, I expected someone with tweed elbow patches and big round glasses.”

“You’re an english major? Statistically speaking, only three percent of the agents that have been recruited for the BAU didn’t have any background in law enforcement or field experience.” This wasn’t the first time you’d been questioned at the FBI for being a liberal arts degree profiler. Your english degree and your fresh age of twenty five left many people to dismiss you through your time in the academy. But you got used to it.

“Sorry to disappoint your stereotypical profile of an FBI agent,” You started, shifting your weight between your feet, now uncomfortable and a little embarrassed in front of your new co-workers.

“Oh I didn’t mean it as an offense. I-” “He’s a genius, but he lacks some social cues. You’re the first girl he’s been around that’s his age in the workplace.” Morgan added and Reid elbowed his ribs. You covered the smile on your face as the two of them started to quietly bicker.

“Let the poor woman go and settle in at least before you harass her.” A brunette woman in a black pant suit came walking toward you. She had a stern face while looking at the two men, but when she turned to you, her face softened into a smile. “Special Agent Emily Prentiss. You do not understand how happy I am to have another woman out in this bullpen.”

You laughed as she led you to the empty desk across from Dr. Reid’s. “Welcome to your new home.”

“Thanks.” You placed your box down before taking the place in. “I’m supposed to meet with SSA Hotchner,”

“Agent l/n,” All heads turned to the man descending the stairs into the bullpen. He was taller than the other two, and that was saying a lot since they practically towered over you. He had a clean boys haircut, paired with a suit and tie. No question that this was the unit chief you were to report to. “I’m SSA Aaron Hotchner. Welcome to the BAU.” He shook your hand before looking at the others. “JJ’s ready to debrief in the conference room.”

And just like that, the three agents sprung into action, leading the way to the board room. “We can go over the particulars when we get back from Nebraska. You ready for your first case?”

His face didn’t change, no change of tone in his voice. He lived and breathed for the BAU. Until you noticed the wedding band on his left hand. It was always the first thing you looked for when you met someone new. It was shallow and patriarchal, you knew, but it was instinct. And it put you at ease knowing there was someone out there he was doing this for. Someone he didn’t have to hold this demeanor around.

“Ready.”

“Funny. But if you have any other insults to give, direct them to the head of the english department at Bowdoin. Mention that you’re talking about y/n l/n, with the 4.0 GPA.”

Prentiss led a slow clap as Derek shook his head.

“I think that’s what the kids are calling a ‘mic drop’.” Spencer added and you couldn’t help your laugh. “Alright kid, why don’t you get out of here before we inevitably find ourselves back.”

You turned off the lamp on your desk and grabbed your crossbody and backpack. “Have a good weekend guys. And Reid,” He looked up, and you laughed as he pushed his hair out of his face. “Please recite the old testament for these two if they mock me while I’m gone.” He gave you a mock salute as Prentiss flipped you off on your way to Hotch’s office.

In the six months you’d been here, these three people you shared the bullpen with had quickly become the siblings you never had. Morgan acted as your annoying older brother, constantly picking on you and Reid. Not only were you the newbie, but you were now the youngest, only a year behind Spencer. Emily Prentiss on the other hand, was the protective older sister you always dreamed of. She was confident and held her own against the male dominated team, but knew when to be soft spoken and caring with victims and the team when needed.

And then there was Dr. Spencer Reid. The smartest person on the planet, in your book. Sure, he was a little socially awkward and didn’t know when to stop listing off all the stats he knew, but you understood. He was consistently the youngest and smartest person in every classroom he walked into. There weren’t many people that wanted to get to know him without bullying him or picking apart his eidetic memory. Despite the problematic first encounter you shared, the two of you stuck together considering your combined intellect and young age. He taught you the ins and outs of the BAU, and helped you get accustomed to D.C. Although, Spencer himself hadn’t really ventured out into the city in the four years he’s been here. So the two of you tried to see as many things as you could in the rare weekends that you weren’t working a case. You worked your way through a third of the smithsonian's, and saw the Declaration of Independence. You’d be lying if you said you didn’t get a little emotional while looking at it. Spencer had called you a nerd, and you didn’t mind one bit.

You walked up the steps to Hotch’s office, case reports in your hand from this week. The blinds were open, you could see him working through the stack of files on his desk. Despite the exhaustion written all over his face, his sport coat was still on, tie still impeccably tight around his neck. Even when he was in private he kept up the put together facade.

You knocked on the door, and heard a quiet ‘come in’ as you twisted the door knob. “L/n,” “I have my case reports from this week.” “Just place them on my desk.”

“How much longer are you here for?” He let out a sigh while closing the file in his hand.

“Another hour or two.” You opened your mouth to respond, but he beat you to the punch. “And before you offer to stay and help me, I don’t need any help.”

“You just don’t want to listen to me singing Coldplay under my breath.” He huffed out a semblance of a laugh. A month into your bout here, Morgan had accosted you on the jet on the way home from Milwaukee. None of you had slept in three days, and you were currently enthralled in your new mp3 player and Coldplay's newest album ‘X&Y’. After the third song, a paper cup was thrown at the back of your head, followed by a ‘I’m trying to sleep, bobo’ from Derek. It was a habit of yours that you had yet to kick.

“That’s part of the reason.” “I knew it.” He opened another file, and you took that as a cue to wrap up the conversation. You rummaged through your purse, looking for the blue envelope you sealed this morning.

“Um, I also wanted to drop this off. It’s for Jack, you mentioned he was being Christened this weekend.” You placed the card on top of the pile of paperwork, your cursive handwriting on top. “I was going to get him a stuffed animal or some type of toy, but he’s only three months old and wouldn’t know the difference. This check may be the penny that helps you guys afford Harvard.”

A real laugh escaped his lips now, as he picked up the card. “Thank you, y/n. You didn’t have to do this.” You smiled. “I know, but I wanted to. He’s a cute kid.”

He looked at the framed picture of Jack on his desk, then back up to you. No one else had mentioned the Christening after Hotch first brought it up. He was quiet, and only liked to talk about his family if he initiated the conversation. You could tell you were the only person who had reached out like this, with a simple gift.

Hotch had been the hardest person to get to know in your time here. Despite Morgan saying there are no secrets kept among the team, you knew these people had their demons. And Hotch certainly had enough both professionally and personally. You didn’t want to push the professional boundaries, but you always wanted to be present in the lives of people that you shared time with. To let them know you were thinking of them, and cared for them. It was probably your most damaging personality trait.

“I’ll let you finish your work so you can get home at a reasonable hour. Tell Haley I said hi.” He nodded. “I will y/n. Have a nice weekend.”

****

December 2005

You pride yourself in the fact that you haven’t shot your weapon in the year you’ve spent with the BAU. It meant that you were successful at connecting to these people’s emotions, despite the asterisk next to their name labeling them as a serial killer or sadist. Guns were there to protect you, and they were always the last result. But as you pulled up to a log cabin in the middle of nowhere Pennsylvania, you had a feeling your record was going to be broken.

The team was working a case where six bodies, two adult males and four teenage males, were found mutilated, along with a cut from sternum to belly button. It was the first case you worked that had no female victims. A small victory, in your mind. But, it was also the first case you worked that the profile of the unsub fit a sixteen year old girl, who had most likely been assaulted as a young child. When children were involved, the team acted differently. They were failed by the people that were supposed to care for them, they were consistently hurt with no one to turn to. And as a result, they would spend the rest of their lives paying for it.

You, Prentiss, and Hotch got out of the suburban, strapping the bullet proof vests onto your bodies. Thanks to Garcia, you had found the unsub’s location once she turned her cell phone back on. A cruiser pulled up behind you guys, two more cops falling out.

“Prentiss, you take the two officers down with you to the exterior basement access. L/n and I will take the main floor.” Hotch ordered as he pulled his gun from his holster.

You could feel the anxiety rising in your chest, but there was no time to calm it down. You barely had enough time to strap on your vest.

“Ready?” Hotch looked at you before taking another step toward the cabin. You nodded, pulling your own gun from it’s holster. “Ready.”

You followed him up to the front porch, announcing yourselves before kicking the door in. You cleared the living room as Hotch cleared the dining room and bathroom, leaving you both to meet up in the kitchen.

That was where you found her. You saw her first, hiding half of her face behind the rifle that she had pointed at you. She was trembling, dried tear streaks left on her cheeks. She was petrified.

“Stephanie Moore?” Her grip on the gun tightened at the mention of her name as you heard Hotch’s footsteps get closer. “My name is Y/n L/n, I’m with the FBI. I don’t want to hurt you Stephanie, but I need you to put the gun down.”

Hotch joined you on your left, both of you directing your weapons toward the young girl. “I did what I had to do to survive. They took everything from me, every last shred of dignity I had. I wasn’t going to let them kill me.” You never thought it would be possible for your heart to break while listening to an unsub. But this tiny girl standing in front of you, with her whole life ahead of her, it just hit you too hard.

“I know you did, Stephanie. You were so brave and so strong. Not many people could survive what you did.” She started to loosen her grip on the rifle, you were getting through to her. “I’m here to help you. I want to put an end to all of this.”

You glanced at Hotch and he gave the slightest nod, giving you the okay to take a step forward together. “I couldn’t let them get away with it.” Ever so slowly, the gun started to lower in her hands.

“You’re doing great. Just a little lower and this will all be over.” Before she could completely lower her weapon, you heard the storm door to the basement slam shut.

Stephanie jumped, raising her weapon back up in her hands.

“You said you were here to help me!” She exclaimed, the gun pointed at you as Hotch took another step forward. “I am Stephanie, but other members of my team are trying to help the boy you took.”

Fresh tears started to fall down her cheeks and you knew you were losing her. “Y/n,”

He whispered to you and she moved the gun from your chest to Hotch’s. “Shutup!”

“Stephanie, hey, look at me,” She shook her head, continuing her stare at Hotch. “He’s in on it, he has to be!”

“He’s not! He’s my boss, trust me, Stephanie.” You heard the safety go off, and before her foot landed as she took her first step towards Hotch, you emptied two rounds into her chest. He rushed forward as she fell, kicking away her gun and checking her pulse. Nothing.

You lowered your gun as your breathing increased, looking at the lifeless sixteen year old lying in front of you. A hand covered your mouth as you realized what you’d done.

You killed her.

You remembered what it felt like to be sixteen. Struggling to find your identity, wanting so desperately to be noticed by someone. For anyone to reach out and help you.

But you took that away from her. You ended her life before it even began.

“Are you guys okay?” You heard Prentiss come up through the basement, but your eyes were closed as she entered the room. “We’re good. Y/n took the shot.”

Hotch stood up and dared a look at you, taking in your grief stricken state. “Did you find the boy?”

“Yeah, he’s gonna be fine.”

Before Emily could greet you, you ran to the corner of the room, heaving up whatever was inside your almost empty stomach. Your throat burned as you threw up for a second time, vaguely registering two people calling your name.

“You’re okay, y/n,” Prentiss approached you, gently resting a hand on your back. You coughed a few more times before a towel was being rushed to your side. “It’s okay.”

The whirring of more sirens forced you to open your eyes and straighten up from your sick position. Prentiss had eyes filled with concern, not letting go of you until you gave her a slight nod. She handed you a water before she exited the house, letting two uniforms in. They went straight to Hotch, asking questions and looking over the body before their eyes landed on you. You felt exposed, like you were the one lying lifeless on the ground for all to see. You took a few deep breaths to get your breathing under control, and tore your gaze away from Stephanie.

Hotch finished his conversation with the officers before walking over to you. “Hey,” He rested a hand on your shoulder, and you couldn’t help but flinch. “It was a clean shot, but protocol states they have to take your gun and badge as well as give a statement to IA.” You nodded, taking your badge from your pocket. “They’re gonna take you back to the station and do an interview. This should all be wrapped up in a few hours. We’ll meet you back there, alright?”

You glanced up at his big brown eyes, warm as they bore into yours instead of their usual slanted nature. “Okay.”

The two officers escorted you to their patrol car, taking your badge and gun before you got in. You felt naked without them, like you were a nobody wandering the streets looking for someone to help, or looking for someone to help you.

It was a good thirty minute ride to the station from the cabin, and when you got there a detective from IA was already waiting for you. They led you into an interrogation room where they already had Section Chief Strauss hooked up through video call. Great.

The questions they asked were pretty straight forward, nothing that couldn’t be answered by a crime scene report from the technicians. But the government insisted on interviewing cops involved in shootings, just in case it wasn’t legal. As if anyone wanted to deal with the psychological repercussions of taking another’s life.

It took them nearly an hour and a half to get through the interrogation. In part due to you almost throwing up a third time as Strauss asked you to repeat the moment you shot Stephanie. They gave you a few minutes to regroup, some ginger ale and crackers from the vending machine to help settle your stomach. They took your fingerprints last, letting Strauss finish up with the bureaucratic discussion.

“That’s all for now Agent L/n. We’ll debrief tomorrow morning when you’re back in Quantico.” “Yes ma’am. Thank you.”

They led you out of the interrogation room and back through the lobby leaving you at the conference room your team had been set up in the last three days.

The white boards were still littered with images of the victims, crime scenes, and the unsub. Piles of evidence were scattered along the table, and you tried to resist looking through them again. You knew if you went through the images of the mutilated boys again, you wouldn’t survive the emotional turmoil. But you needed to know that you made the right choice, the only choice to prevent more families from going through the same pain and suffering as the Corbins.

You turned to the white board, glancing at the first victim. Connor Corbin was fifteen years old, on the varsity soccer team, and involved in musical theatre. He was cousins with the teenager that abused Stephanie. She targeted all the men in her abusers life, letting them know what he did to her. Wanting them to understand the pain she’d had to endure because of their ignorance.

You looked through the rest of the victims, the abusers two younger brothers, father and uncle were among those killed. The boys were only twelve years old. You brought a hand up to cover your mouth, remembering meeting their mother on the first day you were here. JJ was the one to speak to her, as the communications liaison, most people trusted her with being the most empathetic. That fact was up for debate, in your opinion. She was a wreck, and JJ needed help comforting her from Morgan. But you understood, boy had you understood. Her whole family was killed.

“Y/n,” You jumped, startled by the new voices in the room. Hotch, Spencer, and JJ had arrived back at the station. “Did they clear you?”

You nodded as Spencer walked over to you. “Yeah, Strauss just wants to debrief again tomorrow morning.” “Of course she does.”

Section Chief Erin Strauss is a hardass and not the biggest fan of the BAU. “Did they give you your piece back?” Your hand immediately flew to your left hip, void of your gun and holster. “No, I completely forgot about it.” You went to move toward the door, but Spencer laid a hand on your forearm. “It’s okay, I’ll get it.” He gave your arm a comforting squeeze before leaving the conference room.

You spared a glance at Hotch as you started cracking your knuckles. “JJ, why don’t you call the airstrip, tell them to get the jet ready.” “Yes sir.”

In an effort to keep your mind busy, you started to take down the pictures from the white board, erasing all Reid’s notes in his barely legible handwriting. The boy had three PhD’s, yet couldn’t figure out the concept of penmanship.

“Are you alright?” “Fine.” You pulled an empty manila folder out, stuffing Connor’s pictures in. “You don’t have to clean this up for them.” “I know.”

He sighed. “Y/n, stop.” His voice was stern now and you dropped the files. “I asked if you were alright.”

“Why wouldn’t I be alright, Hotch?” You crossed your arms over your chest, letting a breath out. “We found her, we saved her from hurting anyone else, and we brought closure to Mrs. Corbin. Case closed, the BAU gets to go home.”

Your eyes started to water but you refused to bring your hands up to wipe them away. You wouldn’t let them fall. “We’ve all been where you are right now.”

“I’m confident that you’ve never felt what I’m feeling before.”

“Try me.” He didn’t flinch, his hands remained in his pockets, stare heavy on your own.

“When JJ presented this case to us, that two teenage boys and their fathers had been murdered, it was a no brainer for all of us to take it. Two twelve year old boys dead, two more teenagers missing, how could we not take it? But then we got here, and we met with the victims' families, we learned the boys' backgrounds, the unsub’s profile.” You scoffed, not sure who you were angered with at the moment. “This girl was raped by a seventeen year old boy and his father for two years, and we’re still supposed to treat her like a monster, like Tim Vogel?” You shook your head. “I’m not condoning what she did, but, can you blame her? And then we went in, and she had a gun raised at us. I would’ve been able to talk her down, I know I could’ve saved her if she didn’t have the gun.”

“But she had a gun.” You nodded. “She had a gun and it was raised at you. And I didn’t even flinch to take the shot. All it took was two seconds for me to forget her pain, her trauma, and reduce her to a sick serial killer.”

Even though that’s what Stephanie ultimately was, you didn’t want to accept it. Because she was a person before she went through all that pain, she was someone’s daughter, who was involved in gymnastics and softball, and had stuffed animals scattered across her bedroom. God, were you ever going to forget what she looked like?

“Feeling guilty about taking someone’s life is a good thing. It means your human, that you care.” Hotch freed his hands from his pockets, taking the file you packed out of your grip. “You’re not like them, y/n.”

You dared a glance at him as you felt more tears spring to the surface. Those big brown eyes could tell a story all on their own, and right now, they were pleading for you to believe him. You would try.

“Got the goods.” Spencer came back in, your gun and credentials in hand. “They really had the audacity to I.D. me, as if we hadn’t just worked a case with them the last seventy two hours.”

He got you to laugh, which served you enough cover to wipe your eyes dry. And out of the corner of your eye, you thought you saw a rare smile cross Hotch’s face.

But Aaron knew there was more to your guilt than just this little girl. He was the leader of this team, it was his job to know the people he was in charge of like the back of his hand in order to keep them safe. And in the year that you’d been here, he noticed how reserved you were. Too reserved and too broken for a twenty-six year old. How you took on the giver persona to hide the fact that you were terribly closed off to others and your emotions. You would be the first to offer help, to be a listening ear, or lend your shoulder to cry on. But you never accepted it from anyone. Not that you had to, until today.

When Hotch started to notice you and Spencer growing closer at the three month mark, he was excited. Proud, even. He knew you were struggling with the gruesome cases (he knew you threw up after every crime scene, despite your best efforts with barf bags and travel size mouthwash) and hoped you could share your burdens with the young doctor. But it seemed like they only grew in time, like the smile on your face. Hotch just hoped you knew your limits.

“Gather whatever else you guys need for Quantico. Wheels up in thirty.” Reid nodded for both of you as Hotch left the conference room, presumably to find JJ.

“Everything okay in here?” He asked as you continued to empty the white boards, this time at a faster pace. Of course he had noticed the red rim on your waterline and the red tip on your nose. Spencer could read you better than anyone else, regardless of being a profiler or not.

“Yeah, I’m okay. Just talked through the case.” His feet stayed nailed to the ground, yet his eyes continued to stick to the back of your head. You sighed and stopped moving, turning to face him. “Spencer, I can feel you boring holes into the back of my head.”

He had a sheepish smile and ran a hand through his hair. “Sorry. We have copies of all this back at the office, I already faxed it over to Garcia. Why don’t we spend the next twenty eight minutes searching for a good burger before the flight home.”

You smiled. “Okay. As long as I can get a vanilla shake, too.”

****

May 2006

Growing up, you always wanted an office job. A boring nine to five with your own cubicle, a script to follow when your phone rang and a customer needed help. You’d have a generic wall calendar pinned on the particle board, sticky notes littering your monitor screen, and maybe a few pictures of pets and future family. It was safe, predictable, and what you were constantly told all you would be capable of.

Now, as you’re sitting on the FBI owned jet with your six special agent coworkers, you can’t imagine living that life you once dreamt of.

It was nearing two a.m., and you were two hours into the flight home from Los Angeles. Reid was passed out on the couch, Prentiss and JJ in the same state of mind in the cluster of four chairs, legs spread out. Morgan and Rossi were sitting across from one another, each listening to their own playlists. And by the way Rossi was tapping his fingers against the arm rest, you knew it was some genre of opera.

This left you in the back of the jet, staring out the window as you passed over Nebraska. You always had the map up on your screen, wanting to know every state you passed over. No matter the case, you always looked forward to the plane ride. It calmed you, oddly enough.

“Not tired?” Hotch took the seat across from you, handing you one of the two cups of tea. “Plane rides are too exciting for me to catch any sleep.”

You took a sip of the hot drink and your face scrunched out of instinct. You never liked tea, but you tried it again and again when people assured you that it would calm you down. It never worked.

“You could just say no,” He added and you smiled. “I know. But my taste buds may change one of these times.”

He took a sip out of his own cup, no change of expression on his face. You couldn’t help the chuckle that left your lips and his eyes narrowed on you.

“What?”

“Well, you may enjoy the taste, but it seems like it’s calming chamomile effect has never worked on you, either.” “We’re not supposed to profile each other.”

“Then don’t even think about rattling off excuses of why I’m not sleeping.”

He looked down at his cup, slowly nodding his head. “Well if you don’t want to talk about what’s really bothering you, because I know it’s not sleep, I can bore you with Jack’s sleep routine we have to stick to.” You smiled. “You know that I’m the only one on this team that would actually be interested in Jack’s sleeping routine. Hell, anything with that chubby little baby would interest me. Bring it on, Hotch.”

It was no secret that Jack Hotchner was your favorite person on the planet. Not only was he the chubbiest little nugget you’d ever seen, he was the result of two of the strongest people you knew.

The first time you met Haley, she was six months pregnant with Jack, begging Hotch to leave the office early for a date night. You made the afternoon walk up to his office, dropping off some files for him to sign when you first saw her.

“Come on, Aaron. This baby is going to be here before we know it, and who knows the next time we’ll have any alone time will be.”

Before he could respond, you knocked on the open door. Both of their heads snapped over to you, and a red blush of embarrassment spread across your cheeks. “Sorry to interrupt, sir. Just dropping off some reports for you to sign off on.”

You smiled at the petite blonde woman while placing the files on the desk. “It’s okay l/n. This is my wife, Haley Hotchner. Haley, this is Agent y/n l/n, she started about a month ago.” She smiled back at you, extending a hand to shake.

“It’s nice to meet you, y/n. I’ll leave the agent part out, it makes you sound like a robot.” She said and glared at her husband before placing her hand back on her growing belly. You laughed once you heard Hotch let out a breath, knowing he wasn’t offended with her joke.

“It’s nice to meet you too.” The smile only grew on your face as you looked at her, admiring her own belly. “Congratulations on the baby. It’s always exciting to bring a baby into the world.”

“Thank you. If only my husband thought going out with me was half as exciting, he would’ve been gone a half an hour ago.” “Haley!” He was more than surprised that she would speak so cavalierly while at the office, especially around someone he had barely gotten a chance to know yet. But the two girls only shared a laugh.

“Hotch, why don’t you go. I can hold things down around here.” “Y/n, it’s not your responsibility to. And quite frankly-” You dropped a file to the desk, boldly interrupting your bosses statement. You were only acting like this because you knew his wife deserved half the attention he gave to this place. “It’s a friday night, and your beautiful, pregnant wife is asking you to go to dinner with her. JJ and I will be here if anything comes up, I’ll even redirect your calls to my desk.”

“I like you.” Haley said with a smile, gently squeezing your shoulder. “She means business.”

Hotch let out a sigh, reluctantly grabbing his briefcase and punching a few buttons on his phone to make sure his calls went to you. “You or JJ call me immediately if I’m needed.”

“Promise. Now go have fun.” He gave you the smallest smile as he grabbed Haley’s extended hand to him. “Thank you, y/n. I owe you one.” Haley said as they exited his office. But you weren’t looking for a favor in return. You did this to make them happy, and you always felt better when those that surrounded you were at their best.

But Haley did end up paying you back. She asked you to babysit the first night her and Hotch went out after the baby was born. Apparently, she was impressed with your background in social services that Rossi had drunkenly let slip at the office christmas party. And only you would get excited to babysit a poopy baby, for free. And you continued to do it as many times as they needed you to.

You earned a smile from the reserved unit chief, and raised a fist in the air. “I’ll have to add that to the team tally sheet. I’m now tied with Reid for the lead in making you crack a human expression.” “Doesn’t matter who’s in the lead, you’re all behind Jack.” He quipped back and you returned his smile.

You looked back out the window of the jet, the view of any terrain was quite literally clouded. You could see the moon reflecting on the puffy clouds, and you knew then and there you could be converted to a night person if you could look at this view every night.

“I wanted to check in with you, about Randall Garner.” You looked back to your boss, eyes glued to your own, an earnest gaze in them. “With what happened last time-”

“Last time it was a sixteen year old girl. This time it was a psychotic father who was torturing his child. There’s a broad spectrum.”

“So you don’t feel guilty about taking his life?” The way your stomach flipped at the mention of your actions merely hours ago should have worried you more than it did.

“Of course I feel guilty.” You quipped back, and quickly looked around to make sure you didn’t disturb anyone else. Hotch didn’t even flinch. “I didn’t take this job to play God. I wanted to help people, I wanted to stop people from getting hurt. To be on the other side of the heartbreak.”

Before transferring to Quantico, you worked as a social worker in Brooklyn for three years, straight out of college. You saw first hand the horrors and trauma that came with being in the foster system, and you wanted to help children going through the same situation you had.

This became your life, even after you escaped it. And one day, it became too much. You needed a fresh start, to make a change and help people from a different platform. And with your degree in English, and minor in psychology, the BAU seemed to be a perfect fit for a new career.

“Why did you leave DCFS?” It irked you to no end how his voice stayed so calm when he was clearly agitated. Especially since the silky smooth tone had talked you off an emotional ledge one too many times.

“Why are you interrogating me? Strauss said it was a clean shot, that she was proud to have a man like that dead and accounted for.” A direct quote from the ever emotionless section chief. If only she had any field experience, she would understand what this job was like. “Besides, I’ve been here for a year and half. You should have my file memorized by now.”

“Half of your file is sealed. Strauss must have a soft spot for you.” You actually laughed at that. Strauss most certainly did not have a soft spot for you. She was however under orders from the Attorney General of New York to keep my file sealed, no matter my employer.

“My sealed file has nothing to do with the actions I took tonight.” You uncrossed your legs now and turned your body to face him. This conversation wasn’t ending any time soon. “If I needed help grieving this process, I would ask for it, Hotch. I’m fine.”

He wanted to believe you. More than anything else, he wanted to believe that you had found a routine that helped you forget the daily horrors you saw. But he knew that you were the last to leave the office every night, he knew you drove home with the light on in the backseat of your car every night. Deep down, he knew you weren’t fine.

“We don’t ever truly know the people we work with. Despite the fact that we say there are no secrets in this unit, we all have our own demons we hold onto. I know you’re not fine, y/n.” You let out a strained laugh as you started tapping your foot anxiously against the ground.

“I do though.” For the first time tonight, Hotch had no idea what you were talking about. His furrowed brow only made your throat tighten. “I know every single one of these people’s secrets. They confide in me because they know about my past with DCFS. Everything I knew was confidential, and it ate me up inside not being able to tell anybody the horrors these children go through.” You ran a hand through your hair; the flood gates were open. You feared there would be no turning back now. “It started out as me just wanting to get to know them. I wanted to be liked, and I wanted to trust my coworkers. And then overnight, I became Father l/n, sworn to secrecy by the Parish of the FBI. I’ve become a suggestion box, papers filling me up to the top and no one is coming to empty me out.

“But I can’t even be mad at them,” I said as my eyes started to water, remembering what Spencer said to me two months into our friendship. “Spencer told me I’m the only person that’s ever listened to his problems without suggesting that he see someone to talk to. He said I was the only person that’s ever laughed at his stuffy jokes without making fun of him. I can’t be mad at them for confiding in me in their time of need. But I’m just,” You tried to smile as a tear rolled down your cheek. “I’m just really overflowing.”

Aaron Hotchner was lucky enough to have never experienced a heartbreak in his life. He met Haley his junior year of high school, she was his first and only girlfriend, hurling him into a life of love and happiness, sparing him any pain from loving someone too much. But as he watched you break in front of him, feeling so overwhelmed by the responsibility to be everyone’s rock, to be everyone’s source of light, he experienced his first heartbreak. And he was sure he never wanted to feel it again.

“So confide in me.” You didn’t think his tone could become any softer. His baritone voice had already been strained to keep from waking the others, and he somehow became even softer. But you shook your head, quickly bringing your hands up to wipe the tears that fell down your face. “Why not?”

“Because you’re the boss. You have all of us to worry about when we’re in the field. You have Strauss breathing down your neck, waiting for one of us to screw up.” He rested his elbows on his knees, slightly leaning toward you. “Most importantly, you have Haley and Jack that need you to be their confidante. That beautiful family needs you to be there when you’re not here.”

“Y/n, if you can’t come talk to me when you’re drowning in your own thoughts, I’ve failed you as a boss.” He sighed at your continued silence. “I can’t force you to open up. But I can’t watch you give and give and give without earning a reprieve of your own.”

So the two of you sat there, in a deafening silence, as you counted the seconds passing by. You were both too stubborn to pull away first, because that would be admitting defeat, and this conversation would end then and there. You counted to one hundred and eighty seconds, three minutes, when you finally got tired of staring into the endless brown eyes of Aaron Hotchner.

You thought carefully about what you were going to say, what you would reveal in the magic that covered the two a.m. air. And no matter how hard you tried to in those one hundred and eighty seconds, you could not keep your eyes from watering.

“I grew up in foster care.” You started, scanning his face for any judgements. You weren’t going to find any. “The last, and most permanent foster parents I had were horrible. It was basic shit that happened to every kid in foster care, nothing scandalous enough to get them to be turned in. But their birth son,” You swallowed, trying to resist the urge to pick your fingernails. “He moved back in with them when I was fifteen. He was a loser, and he started to take a share of the subsidy checks. I heard him in the living room one night with Charlotte, one of the younger girls that lived there. She was only twelve, and I found him pinning her to the couch, a knife to her throat. And I just snapped. I lunged at him, knocking him off of her. It’s all blurry now, except for when I stabbed him in the throat.” My hand scratched at the side of my neck, subconsciously finding the spot I stabbed him. “He died before the ambulance got there. Charlotte and I both gave statements, and it was ruled as self defense. But the statement still lives in my file, and with some convincing, I got Strauss and DCFS to keep it sealed.”

In all honesty, Hotch didn’t know what to expect when you decided to open your mouth. But he never would’ve guessed this. Not from the doe eyed kid that never forgot a birthday, that got everyone a donut and coffee on Monday mornings. Not from the kindest person he worked with.

“You know that took a lot of courage to get out, so it would be nice if you could say something.” You started to panic, wondering if he saw you as a monster, as a killer.

“You were the oldest one there, weren’t you?” Your eyes widened, how did he know that? “You grew up quick and took on the role of the parent for those younger kids. You wanted them to be safe, stay innocent for as long as they could.”

You finally tore yourself away from his gaze, starting to become too strong. Baby steps.

“None of us had a family. I tried my hardest to shelter them from those people and make a family out of the five of us. And it worked. Because all four of them still reach out and tell me how successful they are.”

“But they don’t feel like your family.” You had a sad smile and looked back up at him.

“Do you ever stop profiling?” He mirrored the smile you gave him. “No, they don’t. But I was old enough to understand that they needed each other more than I needed them. Besides, I found a pretty weird family to take me in.”

You earned another laugh from Hotch as you made a check mark in the air, referencing the team tally. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet, searching through the cash and cards he had in there.

“What are you doing?” He pulled out a thin wallet picture and turned it over to you. It was of him, Haley, and Jack on his first birthday. “You’ve got more than one weird family to belong to.”

He extended the picture to you, but you shook your head, the anxiety forming a pit in your stomach. “Hotch, this is your family. I can’t,”

“You can. And this family wouldn’t be half as happy as they are in this picture if it weren’t for you and everyone on this team.” You smiled down at the picture, Jack had frosting from his birthday cake all over his face. You reached out and took it between your fingers. “You’re a giver, y/n. You wear your heart on your sleeve and exude more empathy than we know what to do with.” You let out a laugh as you pulled out your own wallet now, tucking the picture in one of the plastic sleeves. “It’s time you learned how to accept the love you give.”

It was deep, too deep to be coming from your boss on the private jet at two in the morning. But he was more than just your boss, and they were more than just your team. And this job, boy this job was so much better than sitting in a cubicle, answering questions from a recited list.

****

#aaron hotchner x female! reader #aaron hotchner fic #aaron hotchner #criminal minds #criminal minds fanfiction #aaron hotchner imagine #jules writes shit ??

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honestlyzenoouh · 3 years

Text

Aaron Goes Big Instead Of Home (And Poor Kevin Dies A Bit Inside)

This fic is also on AO3 if you prefer to read over there :)

This was all Neils fault, 100% the little assholes fault. It was a simple bet, a very small one indeed. The fact that Neil even agreed to the bet, should have tipped Aaron off from the very start. But sadly, Aaron is nothing but a salty bitch when it comes to Neil, and the fact the bet involved his brother was even better. He could kill two, no actually tree birds with one tiny victory. Convince his brother that his relationship with Neil was nothing but loveless sex, prove Neil wrong whilst also getting to humiliate him. Win win win.

Teeny tiny flaw in his plan though. Neil won. Neil actually got Andrew to casually display relationship like PDA. With Andrew initiating. Holding hands, kisses goodbye, softly touching hips to get by each other, the whole shebang. Fuck. Damnit. Crap. He wasn’t suppose to readily showcase his emotions towards Neil, he was suppose to prove to both Aaron and himself that the relationship was a fad, and let it fizzle out like his and Katelyns. Okay, he might have been a little bit bitter, as well as the usual annoyance Neil brings out in him, when he made the bet. Whatever.

So here Aaron stood, almost exactly six months after the bet started, in Katelyn’s bathroom just looking at the offending clothes. Katelyn and him might have broken up, but they still consider each other their platonic soulmates. The sex kinda spelled that out for them, not really enjoyable for either of them. Katelyn found out she definitely was on the asexual spectrum, where sex was only enjoyable for her sometimes. When they first got together she had laid all the cards on the table, and told him her feelings about sex, and Aaron had been very understanding and patient with her. It took a long time for their relationship to turn physical, other than the casual kissing and hand holding, and in the two and a half years they had been together, actual sex had only happened a handful of times. And only one of those times had been somewhat satisfactory for both of them.

It was after the last time they had sex, one of the worse experiences for both of them, that Katelyn suggested they might be right for each other. Aaron had wanted to argue with her, wanted to be hurt she would say such a thing, but Aaron had been having the same thoughts for a while before. Because while Katelyn might be asexual, Aaron sure as fuck wasn’t. He got urges and fantasies, and whilst he understood Katelyn didn’t, he also knew it wasn’t her fault they weren’t clicking right sexually. So they mutually decided that they might be better of as best friends instead of partners, but weren’t ready to tell people. Katelyn wasn’t ready to come out, and Aaron would like to keep his pride and not be pitied.

(The sexual identity crisis that sprung forwards in Aaron when he actually realized that it was not only Katelyn that didn’t find pleasure in their sex life is not to be spoken about. Internalized homophobia and too much alcohol doesn’t mix, too many tears, understanding Nickys, and not nearly enough answers. Whatever, he has time to figure it out when the time is right.)

The uniforms material felt way too heavy in his hands, considering it was only a two piece, yet it was surprisingly soft. He guessed that’s what happens if you actually use fabric softener, but what was he suppose to know? He didn’t care enough about his clothes to spend the extra cash on that shit. Katelyn does though, or whoever she borrowed the clothes from did.

He shifted the fabric around his fingers and actively considered forfeiting his dare. However the mere thought of letting Neil win even more, made him visible recoil and slightly nauseas. Fuck that, a thousand times over. A simple knock on the door and a voice asking if he was okay in there, got him out of his staring contest with the outfit, and mumble something even he wasn’t sure what meant.

Taking a deep breath he finally shimmed out of his pants, and pulled the undergarment of the uniform on. A bit shorter than he was used to, but not too bad. Taking off his hoodie and replacing it with the top, made it all a bit much, and way too real. He’s gonna lose his dignity as well as his masculinity to this. The bright orange Vixens uniform sat tight against his chest, but flowed nicely the rest of the way down. Turning a bit this way and that, he got to study his whole body. His ass which normally was kinda flat, popped a bit with the skirt accentuating its shape flatteringly. His shoulder and biceps got the same treatment with the tanktop’s broad straps. So maybe not all masculinity is lost to this. Gathering a bit of his spite for Neil, and general courage, he finally unlocked the door. Finding his last fucks to give after a couple of more moments, he also opened the door. Luckily, it was only Katelyn waiting for him. She moved her head from her phone and smiled from her upside down position on the couch.

“You good?” She simply asked him. Kneading the fabric of the skirt, and pulling at it a bit he nodded.

“As good as I’m gonna get, wearing a skirt because of a stupid fucking bet. I’m so stupid.” Pulling a bit more on the skirt, he looked around. “Where are the others? I just really wanna get this over and done with” Katelyn helpfully pointed downward, hopefully meaning Fox Towers third floor and not the parking lot. Sighing and looking at her with tense shoulders, a question all by it self, she only raised an eyebrow and gave him a look. Obviously not the parking lot, who did he think she was? A monster? Him lifting one of his now unclenched shoulders, no, but you do enjoy to slightly bullying me, so why not. Katelyn snorted and finally got up from the couch.

“I thought about it, not going to lie to you, but your face when I gave you the uniform made me reconsider. You looked like a kicked puppy, it was so sad.” Aaron grunted to make his displeasure know, but followed her to the front door. He only hesitated a bit going through, so little only people who really knew him would realize. Luckily, (or unluckily, depending on how you view it) Katelyn was one of those very few people, and she put an arm around his shoulders for comfort. Together they walked the short way to stairs and down the two flights from fifth to the third floor, thankfully without running into anyone. The hallway of the third floor also blessedly empty, gave Aaron a false sense of fortitude. Holding on to it, until it became as genuine as it’s gonna be, he looked up to Katelyn, “Which room?”

After a quick glance at her phone, she nodded towards the upperclassmen’s room. Great, so Neil roped the whole team together to witness this. Fucker. Shaking off the rest of his nerves, he shrugged off Katelyn’s arm and walked up to the door. Opening and stepping inside made his heart start pounding, but nothing happened. Literally nobody was even looking at him, or acknowledging his presence at all. All eyes seem to be on his twin, currently laying face down on the floor. “This is the worst day of my life” came muffled from the floor. Looking from face to face, Aaron finally made eye contact with someone. Sadly that someone was Neil.

Raising an eyebrow at him, Aaron silently dared him to comment. Unable to backdown, Neil did just that. “Okay Minyard, that’s a bit low, even for you” Nodding towards Aarons chest area whilst he said so, made Aaron look down at the v-neck. Sure it was a bit deep, considering his lack of boobs, but it wasn’t that bad. The v stopped at about the middle of his chest, pale blond hairs exposed to world for once. Bracing himself once again for all the attention that was bound to come his way, now that Neil had spoken to him, he took another step into the room, Katelyn right behind him. But still, all eyes except for Neils’ were on his twin as an unenthusiastic “fuck you” came from the floor. This time it was Neil that raised an eyebrow, want to make a game of this? Aaron nodded once, intrigued with this whole situation.

“Seriously A, isn’t this a bit over the top?” Neil gestured a bit with his hands, presumably meaning the Vixens uniform. Fair question, when the forfeit only specified a skirt. But Aaron kinda lived by go big or go home, and when he asked Katelyn if he could borrow a skirt, and the only thing she had he would be able to fit in was the uniform he said fuck it. To answer Neils question he nodded towards Katelyn, who gave a tiny wave. A look of understanding crossed his face when an answer came from the floor. “This is a perfectly reasonable reaction” This startled a laugh out of Nicky, and made Kevin look up from Andrew towards Neil. When he saw him looking nowhere near Andrew he followed Neils eyesight and caught sight of Aaron. His eyes widened and he stood stock still, but not a noise or word passed through him. Aaron didn’t get the time to analyze that particular reaction, as Neil once more spoke up.

“Right, sure. Kevin, what is your take on the situation? I mean, he only lost a bet, isn’t that a bit overly dramatic?” The mischievous grin he wore didn’t bore well for Aaron. He knew something Aaron didn’t, that fucker. When all Kevin seemed able of answering was a stuttery mess, the foxes finally shifted their attention away from Andrew, most likely to laugh at Kevins inability to talk. Yet, once they saw Kevins now slightly awed expression, and both his and Neils direction of sight, they subsequently came to look in Aarons direction.

What followed was probably the most awkward five seconds of Aarons life. It started as a stunned silence, which was broken by Kevin sadly saying “This is a very bad time to have an identity crisis.”, after that all hell seemed to break loose. Nicky and Allison were actively trying to get Kevin to elaborate on that, and close some bets for them. Matt and Dan were looking at each other, and then at Aaron seemingly trying to work out how best to approach the situation. The new foxes tried to gently blend into the background and disappear with no luck. Only Renee was brave enough to face him. “Hello Aaron, I like your outfit. Is this a new thing we might see more often?”

The innocent question floored Aaron for a bit, and shut the foxes up again. Sure he was still trying to figure out his sexuality, but his gender identity was never a question for him. But now that he was thinking about it, he didn’t actually mind wearing the skirt. Sure it wasn’t completely comfortable, but it was a sports uniform. His own was made of the same kinda fabric and had the same feel, so he was use to that. But if he found a more modest skirt in more comfortable fabric, he didn’t think he’d mind it all that much. I did make his ass pop. Really thinking about that fact made his brain momentarily shut down. Once rebooted he looked Renee in the eyes and answered

“I don’t, I don’t think so? I mean, I’m not sure? It might? Can I get back to you on that one?” Trying to be more open with foxes had been a thing he’s been working on as a new years resolution, but here two months later, it was still really hard. Admitting that hurt a little. Shifting his attention towards Neil again he suddenly realized something. “You didn’t tell them did you?”

“No, I didn’t actually think you would go through with it.” He shrugged his shoulders and smirked at Aaron

“Tell us what?” Came from floor. Andrew had finally decided to join the conversation, apparently. He had only turned his face from directly down, to towards Aaron at the door. He didn’t seem too judgmental, only a bit confused. Ever since Bee had finally convinced Andrew to try a new type of medication, to treat his bipolar disorder and depression, Andrew had become a whole new person. A much more readable person, but you still can’t be a 100% sure with him.

“I made a bet with Neil, and obviously lost. So my punishment was to go out of my comfort zone in the clothes department, considering and I quote; I bitch so much about his. I thought a skirt was the most out there for me. Why are you lying on floor?” Ah, the dreaded communication they needed to better. They were getting there, albeit slowly. Bee helped a lot.

“Andrew got cocky about his biceps, and Matt challenged it with an arm wrestle match. As you can probably guess, Andrew lost.” Dan cheerfully informed from beside Matt, who looked rightfully smug. This made Andrew turn downwards agin and groan sadly. “I benchpress more than any of you” was spoken into the floor. This made the foxes laugh once more. Aaron shuffled a bit from foot to foot, and made the tactful decision to leave with all the focus on his brother. He technically did do the forfeit after all. Get out of his comfort zone and show at least 4 different foxes. Whether it was individually or in a group was up to him.

When he got to his room and about to close the door, he got stopped by a hand on the frame. A very uncomfortable looking Kevin was the owner of said hand. He opened and closed his mouth a couple times, and took a big breath, but didn’t say anything. He then got into motion and just walked into the room. Well then. “What do you want Kevin?” Crossing his arm across his chest, Aaron “patiently” awaited an answer.

“Go on date. Me with. I mean, uuuhhh” Aaron’s brain shut down once more, and this time the reboot apparently took a little too long, because when he refocused in on Kevin once more the man was fidgeting. Which wasn’t something Aaron had ever seen him do. What the fuck was happening here? Was Kevin actually asking him out? And more importantly, why was he asking him out? As far as Kevin was concerned, him and Katelyn was still happily together. He tried to come up with an answer, but Kevin’s flickering eyes threw him off. They kept going from his face to the skirt and then landing on the v neckline. It was almost a pattern. His eyes went from the skirt to his face again when he suddenly spoke up again.

“You need to change. I just. I can’t think, and I really want to talk to you, because I overheard Nicky one time, but I don’t really know if it was just Nicky being Nicky or if it’s actually true. I did ask him but he shut down and wouldn’t even look at me for three days after, so I don’t know for sure. So can you make me think? I mean change. Pl- if you could be as kind.”

Aaron thought he nodded before he turned and walked in to the dorms bedroom, but he honestly wasn’t sure. So many thoughts swirled around in his head, made it hard to concentrate on getting changed. Had Nicky really been so careless he accidentally outed him? It was with Nicky he had had his sexuality revelation and cry with, that cursed night after a Trip to Eden.

It had been a few weeks after Katelyn and him had called it off relationship wise, and Aaron had been having these weird feelings and his mind kept supplying him with these random observation. Objectively speaking, your Chemistry 102 TA is attractive. His sharp cheekbones and plumb lips are attractive features to have. The boy sitting across from you smells nice, wonder what cologne he uses? The man behind the counter at the coffee shop had really nice eyes. They were a warm brown you could get a little lost in.

He had just crossed the doorway into the house when the thought hit him. What if the reason that sex with Katelyn wasn’t satisfying for him, wasn’t because of the fact that Katelyn was asexual and weren’t as in to it as he was, but because she was a girl? What if the reason he seemingly couldn’t have as good an orgasm with a partner then alone, was because he had the wrong gendered partner. He had had earlier girlfriends in high school, both before and after Andrew had arrived, but he always seemed to excuse the bad sex as inexperience. But what if it wasn’t?

That had floored Aaron completely, and he had taken a stuttered breath and stumbled to the couch so he could sit down. Nobody seemed to pay him any mind, hopefully just chalking it up to drunken behavior, not the life revelation it had been. Neil and Andrew hadn’t been drinking that night, and they wasted no time bringing their things up to Andrew’s bedroom to go to bed. Kevin had stayed at Palmetto to spend the weekend with his father, but Nicky had bargained with Andrew for them to go to Columbia anyway, and gotten his way somehow. (Aaron hadn’t asked, didn’t really want to know.) When they arrived at Eden he had all but begged Aaron to drink with him. So Aaron had matched him drink for drink, and actually had a good time. He even danced a bit with a random person with a pixie cut and let a little loose.

He hadn’t realized the tears gathering, nor the way his breathing had picked up until Nicky appeared out of nowhere sitting down next to him. He had swirled his head to look Nicky in the eyes, and the easy going smile he had on his face died when he saw Aaron’s face. He must have looked terrified because Nicky sounded completely sober when he spoke,

“Aaron are you okay? What’s wrong? Did something happen at Eden? Should I go get Andrew?” The more he spoke, the faster the words spilled out and the more panicked he sounded. Aaron tried to draw in a breath to answer him, but it got stuck in his throat so he just shook his head desperately. He really didn’t want to include Andrew too, and rather die than include Neil. Nicky had nodded his head, but still looked at him worriedly. When he finally mastered the art of breathing again he blurted out what he should have said ages ago, even before his little revelation.

“I’m sorry Nicky, I’m so sorry” He crumbled while he said it, and his head had landed in Nicky’s lap. The tears had started to fall about halfway through his apology and he didn’t predict them to stop anytime soon. But neither did the muttered apologies, I’m so sorry spoken softly into Nicky’s thigh. Nicky was bordering on hysteric at that point, franticly petting his hair and seemingly answering Aaron’s apologies

“It’s okay, I forgive you! I don’t really know what you’re apologizing for, but it can’t be that bad! Sure, you’re kinda an asshole, but you’re apologizing so you’re not that big of one. Why do you keep apologizing? It’s okay, I’m right here. Whatever you did I’m always gonna be in your corner, so please stop crying I don’t know what to do! How can I help? If you don’t calm down I’ll have to go get Andrew because I really don’t know how to help you if you don’t speak to me, and I’m starting to get really worried now. Please talk to me.”

It was only when Nicky had started to shift around, as if trying to get up, that Aaron finally snapped out of it. He wrapped his arms tightly around Nicky’s legs and shook his head, turning around to look up at him with pleading eyes. Nicky had looked back at him, tears in his eyes as well and shifted once more. “I’m giving you two minutes to start explaining or I’m getting him. This will not go unspoken of, do you hear me Aaron? I’m pretty sure you’re having a mental break down or something, and you can’t keep that all inside. That is super unhealthy and can cau-“

“I think I might be gay” Nicky had gotten very quiet and still, just looking at Aaron and blinking rapidly. Aaron took a steadying breath and wiped his face free of tears, head still in Nicky’s lap. Figuring fuck it, I already said the hardest part he continued speaking, voice croaking making it deeper than normal.

“I don’t actually know, I just. I keep having these thoughts ever since Katelyn and I broke up, which we did like, a month ago, and I think my brain is just now connected the dots because apparently I’m fucking stupid, and can’t figure out that sex wasn’t as satisfying as regular masturbation, was not because the people I’m with are bad at it, but because they don’t have what I need. Or is it the bad thing and I’m only overanalyzing? The only thing I’m really sure of right now is the fact I’m a huge asshole for giving you and Andrew such a hard time for being gay, when I might be it too. That and apparently I find my chemistry TA hot, and like the way men smell and what is wrong with me?” Aaron sniffed and a few more tears fell from his eyes. They were starting to feel a bit sore now. Aaron had jumped when Nicky suddenly took a huge breath and whispered something that sounded like okay, you can do this. Making eye contact with his older cousin he got a small smile. He reached down wipe the last of the tears away, and began petting his hair again. Much more soothingly this time around.

“So this is a lot to unpack, so what do you say we take it in small bites hmm?” When all Aaron did was nod, he continued on, “So you and Katelyn broke up? Are you okay in regards to that?”

Aaron looked down at his hands, playing with his fingers but answered him, “Yeah, about a month ago. Maybe a little longer. It was an actual mutual decision, something we both felt needed to be done. We had a big fat discussion about our feelings and called it quits. We just aren’t ready to tell just yet. Might not for a while to be honest. She has some things to work through, and she’s my best friend so of course I’ll put it off for as long as she needs.” Shrugging his shoulders he looked up again.

“Okay then, I’m happy to hear you’re doing okay there. These… thoughts you mentioned, what exactly do you mean?” Wincing a little, Aaron had tried to clarify his brains jumbled observations. They sat on the couch talking about each and everything Aaron had been feeling and thinking about those past two months. Aaron found that Nicky could be surprisingly quiet and understanding, and that it was really cathartic to talk about it all. So apparently Aaron could see the attractiveness about guys, but he didn’t know if he wanted to date them. Kissing had crossed his mind once or twice, but quickly shut down because he wasn’t ready to think about it.

The last thing Aaron had asked of Nicky before they went to bed that night, a few hours later, was that he kept quiet. He wasn't ready to explore his sexuality, let alone come out. Nicky had given him an understanding smile and sighed out of course.

A knock on the door startled Aaron out of his memory and into the present again. Shrugging his hoodie over his head he decided to just get it over and done with. Fucking Kevin sticking his nose where it doesn't belong. When he was fully dressed once more, he walked over to the door and ripped it open.

"What do you want Kevin?" He said maybe a little too forcefully. Kevin had moved away from the door, and was sitting at the couch Matt had supplied the living room with. He gestured to the other end where he was sitting. Sighing to make his displeasure known, he got to the couch and plopped down. Looking over at the other boy he repeated his question, a bit more mellow this time. Kevin was sitting with his legs curled up under him, his right hand playing with the fabric of his pants.

"A date, ideally. With you, specifically." His face was set in a small smile, eyes sparkling hopefully. Aaron's heart sank a little, so Nicky had outed him. Accidental or not, that still shot a pang of panic and hurt through him. Before he could muster up the energy to answer him, Kevin continued,

"I don't actually know if you'd be interested, or even actually into boys. About three weeks ago, I overheard Nicky speaking to who I assume was Erik, considering he was speaking some german. He kept switching between english and german though, and going on a tangent about queerness being genetic, the twins, and breaking up with girlfriends. Never mentioning any names. So I don't- I'm not actually sure it was you he was talking about. I tried to ask him but he just shouted no, hung up the phone and all but ran away from me. He haven’t really spoken to me yet. I think he feels bad, because I overheard him.”

A feeling of relief spread through Aaron. Even though Nicky had spoken about their conversation from months ago, he had worded it so only people who knew Nicky intimately would have a clue. Or simply think he was talking about Andrew. Still feeling some of his earlier panic, Aaron opened his mouth to profusely deny deny deny, not at all ready to talk about his sexuality again, he remembered a tiny detail from Kevin’s explanation. If he had overheard Nicky three weeks ago, why in the world hadn’t he said anything? Either to him or the others? Closing his mouth again, Aaron tried to calculate what would happen if he “came out” to Kevin. He wasn’t even sure what the ever-loving fuck he was, other than not straight, but if Kevin had held tight for those three weeks maybe he would for however long it took for Aaron to figure it out. One small parentheses made the equation hard though. Kevin’s apparent desire to date Aaron. Aaron might not be the best at math, but a huge glaring pair of parentheses in an equation needed to be addressed first, in order to solve said equation. Right? Aaron’s pre-med not a simple math major, how was he supposed to know?

“Why?” It had slipped out of Aaron’s lips without permission, but he really needed to know before they got any further in this equation. Why now? Why him? Kevin furrowed his eyebrows and tilted his head slightly, apparently not getting Aaron’s question. Aaron elaborated his inner thoughts, and the questions made Kevin pause. A slight flush rose across his cheeks, but it didn’t take long for him to gather his thoughts, only a shake of his head.

“So, I’ve been talking to Bee right? In the process of becoming sober” Aaron nodded, not really in the mood to actually talk right now. Luckily, Kevin continued on.

“Okay, so. She hasn’t just been helping me getting sober, also just. Better? In general. We have been talking trough my growing up, and Riko and Andrew. Just. Everything I guess. It made me realize some things, and she has been encouraging me to do something about it. I haven’t wanted to, until three weeks ago, where I heard I might have an actual chance.” He shrugged his shoulders, now looking down at his lap, really focusing on the piece of fabric between his fingers. Aaron’s mouth went a little dry at that implication, not that he really knew why.

He thought all bravery had left his body, after having to endure his forfeit, but apparently not because he felt himself reaching his right hand across and over Kevin’s left. It made him start and look up at Aaron. Sitting there with his hand over Kevins made him feel the same sense of fuck it, as he had with Nicky all those weeks ago. So throwing caution into the wind, he unstuck his tongue from the roof of his mouth, and asked what he thought was the most pressing matter.

“What did you realize?” Kevin’s face went from flush to straight up red, but he kept his eyes locked with Aaron.

“Apparently it is possible to admire people of the same sex aesthetically, and not just because of their exy skills. And that I find your personality and general body incredibly attractive.”

Kevin’s voice had gone down an octave, and the sound of it sent a shot of something, through his stomach. The very same something he has been feeling pertaining his chemistry TA lately. Great, now he also found fucking Kevin hot. Not that that might be a problem with Kevin considering the resent confession. Though now that he really thought about it, Kevin really is an attractive person. He has sharp cheek bones, but his green eyes softens his face up, so he doesn’t look so severe. His nose is slightly upturned, but with a tiny bump on the bridge, which is something Aaron hadn’t noticed before. Wonder where he got it from? Exy most likely. His thighs has the same kind of muscle definition that Katelyn has, which is something Aaron has always found arousing.

He should probably say something though, instead of just mindlessly looking at Kevin. The poor dude looked about one breath away from a minor break down. He shook his head to clear it from his Kevin related epiphany.

“Fuck it okay, all cards on the table?” He gestured with his left hand, just now noticing his right still laying over Kevins. When he got a hesitant nod from him, he continued on now determined.

“I don’t actually know what I am, other than maybe not straight. Katelyn and I are broken up yes, but we haven’t actually told anyone. Not ready yet” A slight flush rose across his own cheeks when he thought about his next admission, “And I kinda find you aesthetically pleasing as well.”

A small smile spread across Kevin’s face and he opened his mouth, but Aaron cut him of before any words could come through. “But! But, I really don’t know what that means. And I don’t think it’s fair for you, if I didn’t make that abundantly clear first. Your face is attractive, I think, and I know you enough to feel safe maybe starting a thing with you. Just, some minor things before you ask me again?”

Kevin nodded his head quickly and opened his mouth again, but once again Aaron cut him off before he could speak. “Okay so one;” He held a finger up on the hand not holding Kevin’s.

“I’m nowhere near ready to tell people about anything related to my sexuality, so if we do this. It’d have to be in complete secret,” Another finger joined the first one and he went on. “Two, we’d have to take it slow. I don’t know what I’m comfortable with, or how far I’m willing to go, so you’d need to be patient with me. Possibly really patient with me.”

He raised a third finger to go with his last bit.

“And lastly but most important, you need to tell me if things isn’t working for you anymore. I know I come with a lot of rules and regulations, but I need to figure out if this is really for me. You feel safe enough for me to try with specifically, but if that ever ends up not being enough for you, you tell me. Immediately. That is very important to me. If there is one thing my relationship with both Katelyn and Andrew have taught me anything it is honesty is super important. Well, and consent but you know Andrew too so of course you know that. Okay, you can talk now.” He unfurled his hand, and waved it at Kevin’s to demonstrate his point. Kevin looked a little shell shocked after being loaded with all that information, and he took a moment but finally he spoke, his small smile lighting up his eyes.

“Yeah, I can work with that.”

It was spoken softly, and it took Aaron an extra two seconds to realize what Kevin meant. He still wanted to “date” Aaron, even with all these rules. And he had not seen that coming, expecting Kevin to give up and find someone new to pester about dating. He hadn’t really taking his stubbornness into consideration, which really was an oversight on Aaron’s part, and predicted this would happened.

“Ask me again.” He challenged him, a small part of him still excepting him to not go through with it. And by now, Aaron kinda really wanted to go on this gay adventure with Kevin.

Kevin’s smile grew in size, and made a dimple appear in his right cheek, another thing Aaron hadn’t noticed Kevin do(had, could?), and he shifted closer to Aaron. He shifted his left hand so they were holding hands, rather than Aaron holding Kevins, and took hold of his right hand as well, placing both in his lap. Aaron could feel his cheeks warming up, but didn’t hinder his movements.

“Would you like to go on a date with me? And maybe hold a little hands with me? That’s all I ask for now, and we can figure adjustments out as we see fit in the future. And secrecy is okay with me at the moment, and I promise to tell you if I change my mind.”

Aaron’s whole upper body felt warm now, most likely a blush, but he also felt surprisingly excited. This had suddenly turned into a thing Aaron really wanted to explore. Mirroring Kevin’s smile he answered, feeling confident in his mental math. This equation wasn’t so hard to solve as the first one.

“Yeah okay, I think I’d really like that”

Part 1 of “Aaron Tries His Best”

1 - 2(coming soon)

#kevaaron #andreil #besties Aaron and Katelyn #Kevin Day #Aaron Minyard #Nicky Hemmick #all for the game #all for the gay #aftg #zenoouh writes #Neil Josten #Andrew Minyard

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