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masterwords · 1 year

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stand as one

Summary: Derek & Hotch are invited to a BAU family reunion at Rossi's. They're semi-retired in Chicago, no one knows about them, and Derek is feeling a little self-conscious about his scars.

Pairing: Hotch/Morgan

Warnings: alcohol, talk about scars/trauma (specifically from the episode "Derek", and George Foyet)

Words: 2.7k

Notes: Written for @imagining-in-the-margins CM Comfort Fic Challenge using the prompt: Character is insecure about a physical attribute. Honestly, it was hard to choose, the list of prompts was so good. This story fits into the post-WITSEC retirement in Chicago series: The Chicago Times.

***

“Are we really flying back to Virginia for a pool party?” Derek asks, staring hard into the mirror. Up until this point he hasn't given it much thought. The scar that melts its way from his collar bone to the tip of his sternum has been there long enough that he's learned how to live with it. Therapy has helped some, Savannah helped more, and he's(mostly) okay with it. What was left behind from the experience, tucked away on the inside is far worse, anyway, and he's plodding through that a little slower. He wants to take his time with it, not rush through it and expect grand results.

But that means there are a lot of things he still has trouble with.

Being in crowds, bumping shoulders, he can do it now if he has to but sometimes the light is just the right shade of faded denim blue and the streetlamp pools just the right sodium yellow and he breaks out in a cold sweat. He remembers clearly telling Savannah to call Hotch, call Hotch...it's a small consolation now that when it happens, he can reach out and take hold of Hotch's hand (if it's not in his grip already) and know that he's right there. Not a phone call away anymore, never again. It's usually his shoulder bumping against Derek's.

But a pool party at Rossi's sounds like digging up the bad shit. And then rolling around in it. It sounds like people looking at him with his melted scar tissue dead center, the scar that Jack says makes him look like Iron Man only way cooler, and feeling sorry for him. Remembering what happened to him, how they found him in that cabin, why he left the BAU.

He's so tired of feeling like their tragic baby brother. It was easier to leave when he considered that as an alternative – them never being able to see him as anything more than the sum of his traumas.

“We can decline the invitation,” Hotch says, a little pensive. He's only going out of some misplaced feeling of obligation after having not seen the team in over a year. Leaving the way he had, they'd been forced to move on quickly without him, not even a backward glance, no goodbyes and frankly there hasn't been a time that felt right for him to drop in on them. It seemed easier this way for everyone. Less painful, fewer tears. He didn't imagine they cried many over him in the first place, not with Emily coming back to them. “If you'd like, I can call Dave and tell him something came up.”

“No, you can't do that...we're going to Venezuela right afterward and our flight leaves from D.C, in case you forgot. We have to go.”

“We can change our flights, Derek. They let you do that.”

Derek touches his chest, runs his finger along the strangely sloped ridge of numb scar tissue and frowns. It's slick and smooth in places, nothing like the scars that Hotch carries with him. Hotch's are sensitive and cause him problems, he's in pain more often than he cares to admit after so many surgeries to correct what was damaged. Derek's...well, he looks at it and he frowns at the way it mocks him. It's like someone took a plastic doll and held it up to a hair dryer.

Or set a heated knife to a smear of white phosphorous. He sighs.

“You don't have to swim.”

“You know damn well it's gonna make things even weirder if I don't strip my shirt off and jump in. They're gonna zero in on that and make it worse.”

Hotch is behind him now, arms slipping around his waist, pointy chin digging into his shoulder. He's just a hair taller than Derek, just enough that he can do that without too much effort. “You're still the most handsome man on Earth,” he reminds Derek quietly. There is a sincerity in his voice that Derek can't remember hearing from anyone else. Sure, people look at him all the time and he knows damn well what he looks like, scar or not...but when Hotch says it, it sounds different. Reverent. Sacred.

“You're not wearing your glasses, you're practically blind.”

Hotch rolls his eyes and dusts a string of stubbly kisses along Derek's shoulder and up his neck, ending behind his ear. He hasn't shaved yet today and it makes Derek's skin flood with goosebumps. “Let's just say no thank you, send a case of wine and a card...”

“From all of us? Aaron, you keep saying we. We can decline, we don't have to go...baby, I hate to remind you, but they don't know about us.”

“What better way to tell them than by sending alcohol and not being there to see the reactions?”

Derek twists around until they're face to face, bare chest to bare chest, draping his arms over Hotch's shoulders. “The case of wine isn't a half bad idea, but we're showing up with it. Otherwise they'll come here...”

“Then you'd better get packed.”

- - - - -

Rossi's house doesn't look any different than when he was last here, but it feels strange. There was always something familiar about the feeling of walking up his steps, knocking on his door, feeling small inside his perfectly manicured grounds. It reminded him of afternoon spent running around in great emerald spaces while his parents rubbed elbows with Senators and other rich, important people.

He still does feel small, but he no longer feels familiar.

“Aaron!” Rossi shouts, throwing the door open. He pulls Hotch into a hug, the kind that squeezes the air out of your lungs, and mutters something about missing him and being a stranger and it sounds insulting but sweet at the same time.

Stepping back, Hotch watches as Jack takes his hug and then rushes inside to find Henry and Michael, he hasn't seen his friends in too long. And then it's Derek's turn, Rossi doesn't waste any time hugging both Derek and Hank in one go. He's practically weeping over how big Hank has gotten when he breaks the hold.

“Where's Savannah?” Dave asks, dabbing at his eyes with a handkerchief. Hotch looks down at his feet while Derek begins to tell him about Doctors Without Borders and co-parenting long distance, and finally about their decision to see other people.

“It just made sense,” Derek says with a shrug. He doesn't look sad about it, but Hotch knows it still gets to him sometimes. He misses her. Hank squirms in Derek's arms and babbles something that sounds like half words and half nonsense, and instinctively Hotch reaches out to take him from Derek. He knows what Hank wants.

Rossi watches the interaction with one eyebrow cocked a little higher than the other. He doesn't have time to ask, though, because Hotch brushes past him while talking directly to the toddler in his arms, laughing and smiling as they go. Hank wants to see the pool. Derek has Hank's diaper bag with all of his swim gear thrown over his shoulder, so he follows dutifully while Rossi watches, takes note, and closes the door. They're the last to arrive. His entire family, estranged though it were, is all back under one roof. Temporary, but he's not going to give that more weight than necessary until the sun goes down.

- - - - -

“Poo! Poo!” Hank squeals as Derek changes him into a swimming diaper and covers it with a pair of Iron Man swim trunks. A gift from Jack who, though he was growing up, hadn't lost his love for The Avengers. He'd just moved on to collecting comic books and discussing the lore with his friends, except he loves to watch Avengers cartoons with Hank.

“Is he telling you he's pooped?” Alex asks, extending her hand to Derek, helping him up off of the ground. He laughs, snatching his running baby before he hits the pool by himself. He's already tried it three separate times.

“Pool,” he says, bending and twisting to hold the wiggly boy in his arms. “He wants to go in the pool. It's all he can think about.”

“It's very nice, Rossi keeps it pretty warm.”

Derek looks at the pool and nods. “I bet. Maybe in a bit, huh? We're still makin' the rounds.” He's avoiding the pool, that's all. And they're about to notice. Alex is the third person to remind him that the water is warm and that he'll enjoy it. That's why they're here, right?

JJ beans him with a squishy basketball, soaks the entire front of his shirt. “GET IN LOSER!” she hollers, wrestling Henry back down into the water before he can climb out to grab the ball from Derek.

Penelope has already made several comments about depriving them all of the Derek Morgan gun show, even Reid has mentioned that Hank looks like he'd really like to test it out. Finally, when Hotch can't take it anymore, he downs the rest of his beer and pulls his own t-shirt over his head.

None of them has ever seen him without a shirt, never even dreamed that it was a possibility. Frankly, most of them probably thought he slept in his suits (and they weren't exactly wrong on occasion, he had been known to fall asleep sitting at his desk or on his couch, curl up in a ball for a quick nap on top of his hotel bed...) so when he shows up in sweaters and khakis, or today in a t-shirt and swim trunks, people are already more than a little off guard. It doesn't look like the Hotch any of them remembers.

And when he takes his shirt off, baring for the first time not only the notes that George Foyet left scrawled all over his skin but a map of cruelty that stretches in a timeline of silvery scars back to his childhood, they can't help but look. His back is just as scarred as his front. “Hank, come here buddy,” Hotch says, extending his arms to the little guy who crawls happily from Derek to Hotch. He doesn't hesitate.

"Poo!!"

"Yes, buddy. Let's go try out the pool."

Derek is even staring. He can't help it. The sight isn't new to him, Hotch and Haley had a pool at their house and he was no stranger to disarming the alarm and hopping their fence late at night when his nightmares wouldn't quit and taking full advantage of the water. Most of the time he would find Hotch already in the same place, floating away from crime scene photos that whispered in his ear when the night stretched out a little too long. Got a little too dark.

But this sight, he's realizing now, has belonged to him so long he's not sure how to share it. Or even if he wants to. He wants to protect it. Like their eyes will wound him. He knows damn well that's stupid; Hotch isn't even that bothered by it anymore, it's just a comfort thing for him...he doesn't like to be cold. He likes layers.

All eyes are on Hotch and Hank as they take the steps down into the shallow end of the pool one at a time. The crystalline water laps at his ankles, his calves, his knees, and he hisses when the cold meets his waist and everything below. The shock of it takes his breath away. Hank giggles when the cold water tickles his toes and he tightens his grip around Hotch's neck.

“It's okay,” Hotch whispers against his ear. “I've got you.”

He bends his knees and lowers them down into the water until Hank is up to his knees and trying to scale him to get away from it. “You're choking me, bud,” Hotch laughs, trying to pry little fingers from his neck.

It doesn't take much thought before Derek takes his shirt off. If Hotch can do it, so can he. That was the idea, right? All eyes on Hotch, a distraction. He appreciates the gesture. Derek dives into the deep end and swims like a shark, stealthy under the water all the way to his son and Hotch teasing the water with baby toes. He surfaces, water pouring over his head and down his shoulders and he grins, drenched and happy. Hank claps.

"Den! Den!"

"Again?! What do you think I am?" Derek asks, but he obliges. Dripping wet, he hops out and repeats the stunt two, three, four more times until he's winded.

“Want me to take him?” he asks, standing close to catch his breath.

“Not a chance. He's keeping me warm,” Hotch insists with a smirk. “I was told the water was nice. These people are all liars.”

“I coulda told you that,” Derek says, wrapping his arms around both of them. He's sunny and warm, already mostly dry, and he can't believe that even in the afternoon sun Hotch's skin feels chilled. The man's circulatory system is a joke.

Now everyone is staring, but they're not staring at scars. “You two wanna let us in on whatever this is?” Emily asks, stretching out like a cat on top of her pink floatie and extending her arm to the edge of the pool, silently asking whoever is near for a refill. Rossi takes the bait gladly and gives her a heavy pour of something blushy, ice cold and sparkly. Her drink matches her floatie.

Hotch glances at her, and then at everyone else, and smiles. It's easier now, he's finding, when he doesn't have anything to lose. No job to protect, no secrets, no lies. In the morning they'll fly to Venezuela and spend a week exploring with Savannah during her break, and then they'll go back to their life in their house and their jobs in Chicago. Some of these people watching the standoff will return to their own BAU-free lives, and the rest will report to Emily bright and early Monday morning.

What he is surprised to find, in that moment, is that it all adds up to one simple fact: he has nothing to hide. No reason to hide.

But he can have some fun.

“If we have to explain this to a group of profilers, you may want to re-evaluate your team, Agent Prentiss.” He says it softly, not a trace of Agent Hotchner and his biting tone anywhere in it. And the smile actually reaches his eyes. She can't help but laugh at the rebuff.

“Touche.”

They swim until nightfall. Well, most of them do. Hotch's grand gesture to make Derek feel more at ease was short lived, his skin was flooded with goosebumps the minute Penelope and JJ took warm little Hank from his arms and he had to get out, get his shirt back on and hide beneath a sun-baked towel. He might come away with a sunburn but better that than freeze to death in summer.

Exhausted from the excitement of swimming and playing lawn games with the other kids, Hank passes out on Hotch's chest sprawled out like a starfish, leaving a puddle of drool that drenches his entire side. Derek plays pool games well into the evening with JJ and Will and Luke while Emily and Penelope float and drink. In the shade, Reid and Alex are playing a card game while Rossi and Luke trade stories. There are more people everywhere, some Hotch knows well and others he only recognizes, but it feels like a family. Some of them see each other every day, others pop in and out for special occasions, but they're all welcome.

“Thanks for inviting us, Rossi,” Derek says, shutting the car door on two sleeping boys and Hotch who looks about ready to join them. He's already spent the last couple of hours napping on a lawn chair. “Sorry we can't stay any later, our flight leaves early tomorrow.”

“Thank you for coming,” Rossi replies, hugging Derek for the third or fourth time that day. Harder this time. He smells like wine and is crying again. “You two...” he starts, allowing for the tears to have their places. “Don't be strangers.”

“Yeah. We won't. Thanks for bringing us back.”

#aaron hotchner #derek morgan #bau team #team as a family #hotchgan #mortch #pool party vibes #fanfiction #criminal minds #hotch x morgan #aaron hotchner x derek morgan

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