aniiii 🇦🇷

The overly soft cotton batting is doing little to thaw out your frozen flesh, the abundance of air in the fibers has nothing to insulate with your temperature so low. 95.7 degrees farenheit, just on the edge of hypothermia. The old frame under the thin mattress rattles with every shiver. Adhesive nodes across your body track your temperature, your racing heart trying to compete with chilled veins, and the oxygen in them from your rapid, chattered breaths. Your eyelids twitch as you try to keep them shut.

"Are you relaxed?" Dr. Reid's voice is calm, smooth, analytic, a few feet beside you in his stool with his clipboard full of meticulous notes. A small red light glows dimly from the corner of the room. "If you're relaxed, and you feel ready, I'd like you to count down from one hundred, not too slow or too fast, just let yourself be calm, and try to even out your breaths." Your fluttering diaphragm tenses with your effort to control it, fighting against the involuntary shivers in every muscle. "100, 99, 98..." He starts for you.

You aren't ever quite sure of the goal of his experiments, what hypothesis he's trying to prove or disprove, the methodology is always the more pressing issue. The research board would surely never approve university funds for things like this, a nearly nude subject chilled to painfully peaked nipples, before attempting to hypnotize them.

It isn't working. Your mind isn't as sharp as it would be if you weren't shivering, but it isn't as dull as he's aiming for.

"I can't relax," you chuckle, all air, no strain on your vocal folds.

"No? Try counting from a higher number." Your eyes open, before squinting back down under the florescent lights in the ceiling tiles, and falling on the camera that's always focused on your reactions.

"No, Spencer, I'm so cold, I can't just relax, my whole body's tense-- why do you even want to hypnotize me, hasn't this been studied?" The wheels of his stool creak, his clipboard clicks onto a table, and he sighs.

"I just want to understand what it might take to be able to control another person's thoughts or actions." He glances at the monitor attached to the wires stuck onto you, and scribbles down the readings.

"What would you make me do? If you could?" He tuts.

"I'm not sure." His rubber soles make a dull sound on the tiled floor, a few quick steps toward the bed, to bend and inspect your body. "I wouldn't induce you into anything... Salacious, maybe just a code phrase for you to repeat subconsciously." His hand floats over you, guiding his own gaze, without giving you any hint of heat. "Just need to check one more thing," he mutters, and pulls back roll his sleeve down.

Electric shock.

Not the kind given by electrodes, he's already tried that, but the kind given by the surprise of his hot fingers diving between your legs. It takes so little to make you gush for him.

"It could almost seem like you enjoyed that." Your thawing brain can't tell if it should confirm, savor the heat of his hand-- defend, push it away-- or simply focus on defrosting. "Is that why you let me study you? I don't pay you, I have nothing to offer you as far as academics or career, there's nothing to obligate you to me... Do you just get off on this?"

"Do you?"

This started with an interview. A series of questions in a survey given to many across the university's campus, which didn't provide enough of a sample pool for Dr. Reid, your friend's professor. She didn't realize when she brought you in for participation, that she was just the largest domino in the effect that led to you laying in a cooler, with air holes drilled into the sides and the rubber gasket removed from the lid in case you couldn't handle the ice around your body, separated by a blanket only thick enough to prevent skin irritation.

He bends again for a kiss, contemptibly warm.

"I thought you weren't supposed to get attached to your subject?" You ask through a grin that fades as soon as his heated palm flattens over your cheek.

"It may alter my findings, but it's only natural with how much time we spend together, and when you're this beautiful..." His other thumb flicks over your nipple, producing a shocked hiss.

"Is that why we always end up...?"

"You let me do so much to you, it's only fair you should get that-- sit up." He takes your hand to help your still tense muscles pull you upright. He takes a short step, just enough to reach the table holding his clipboard, and the soft cardigan he'd seemed to taunt you with when he took it off.

It envelops your shoulders, a welcome warmth, almost overwhelming as every stitch lays on your bare skin.

"We need to warm you up so you don't really get hypothermic," he says smoothly as he slides in behind you, wrapping you in arms that push out a sigh of relief. He hisses like a simmering saucepan as his hands find yours, "You're ice cold, poor thing." His face nestles in your shoulder. "Do so much for me." Slowly, your curled body turns to a melting point, sinking into his warmth as it travels down your arm, soothing the goosebumps in his path.

You walk down the dark halls with a smile, easy steps, a loose fitting top under the cardigan he'd let you take after your last session. You don't need to read the nameplates by the doors anymore, or to knock on the one you stop in front of, you know his office as well as your own bedroom.

You aren't met with the same easy smile, nor the usual polite one you get, or even the occasional knowing smirk of anticipation for his plans. Instead, he waves you over with a stony expression, and fingers that spark memory.

"I want to try something different today." It's not an irregular request, he's yet to ever try the same thing twice. In his other hand, you notice something hidden by a clenched fist, silver in the glimmer you can catch of it. "I have everything set up in the other room, but I need to... Confirm with you, first." Your bag slumps into its normal pile on the corner of his desk, as you fall into the chair in front of it.

"What- is it gonna hurt?" He naturally notes the way you refer to it with inevitability.

"Maybe briefly, a split second-- and it shouldn't have any long term effect, a one-time dose should be perfectly recoverable." A dose... He's yet to medicate you in any way, you'd assumed it was a line he'd set or an inability to access or simply a disinterest in proven pharmaceuticals. "And that's exactly what I want to study with you, a one-time use of a regular dose, it's completely safe, I just want to see its effects, in person." His eyes drill into you, flicking toward any movement of your fingers, each microscopic furrow in your brow.

"Okay." His eyes widen, deep, cloying.

"Are you sure? This is technically a highly addictive drug."

"Oh..." you sigh, "I'm sure." His eyes widen further. The object in his hand clicks onto the desk, glass, certainly, before two flattened hands reach toward you.

"You don't have to if you aren't completely comfortable."

"I don't have to do any of the things we do."

The set-up is simple, the old hospital bed beside a silver rolling tray, lined and covered to protect the gloves, gauze and syringe arranged in it. At the sink in the far corner of the room, he scrubs his hands almost obsessively. Those hands are then snapped into a pair of blue nitrile gloves, and attentively open the bottle he'd been fidgeting with in his office, lined still with foil. The needle punctures the aluminum, and slowly draws in a careful half of a milligram. His face is stern with focus as he sets the syringe back down, to tear open an alcohol swab, before picking up a disposable tourniquet, and securing it tight around your arm. He holds the syringe up to the light, pushing out any air, along with a small drop that falls down the needle.

"It should take about fifteen minutes to set in, just stay seated, it might make you dizzy or sleepy." His pupils track the needle steadily as he lowers it to your arm, a soft countdown on his lips before pressing it past your skin, into your pulsing vein. Your face scrunches with the puncture, a sharp pain that continues as he slowly pushes the syringe's plunger down, a droplet at a time into your bloodstream.

"You're taking your time," you mumble through a wince. He doesn't even look up at you.

"If I push it too fast, it increases the chance for adverse effects, like respiratory depression-- the inability to breathe on your own." The camera catches your eye now, not recording as it always is during his research.

"Are you gonna turn the camera on?" The question is punctuated by a sick groan instead of a question mark, as the needle slides out and gauze is pressed into your skin.

"No, one-time experiment... I have a good memory." He stands from his rolling stool, to head all the way back to the sink, and the adjacent sharps bin to dispose of the dirtied needle. "I film our other tests in case I notice something later that I hadn't noticed before, but... I don't think I'll want that, in this case." He tears the gloves off before he comes back.

His eyes are deep, they usually are, but today there's something heavier behind them, something unknowable to anyone but himself, because everything's knowable to him. That's why he does these things.

"How was that?" You shrug, and wrap a hand over the elastic bandage he'd rolled around your arm to keep the gauze in place.

"It hurt, but it's just like getting a blood draw, not too bad." He sits again, this time at the foot of the bed, and starts on the laces of your shoes. "Why do you need my feet?" You ask, though you scoot down to make it easier for him.

"We'll be here a few hours, you should be comfortable." He gently lowers his arm to let your shoe fall to the floor before starting on the next one. "You look nice in my sweater."

"It's very comfy," you reply with the same smile you had on when you walked in. This time, he gives a weak grin back. "Is there a reason you wanted to drug me today?"

He inhales sharply, "Curiosity."

He's rambling about something, the assignment in his class that almost every student aced, the implications of some philosophy on some study-- when his words suddenly seem dull.

"Woah," you laugh, setting a hand behind yourself to steady your newly wobbling vision.

"It's kicking in?"

"It's really... Woah." There's not a better word for it, maybe not any other word in your mind now. His fingers feel cloudlike as they sit on your waist, eyes exploring your constricted pupils and flushed cheeks. "'m... Tired..." His eyes soften even deeper.

"Wanna lie back?" You attempt to nod, but aren't sure how successful you are with the dizzy rush that hits your blurring mind. You're both hyper aware of your surroundings and completely outside of them, like the down-turned camera sitting on its stand, and the too-soft mattress beneath you, and the warmth of Spencer's palms wrapped beneath your ribs. "Poor thing," he mutters do deep beneath his breath that you can't hear, "I'm sorry."

"It's... weird," you're stuck reflecting, introspection you've learned to do naturally throughout his studies. "Not really... Bad, though." It's a bit like that first phase of drunkenness, tipsy, fuzzy at the edges, dizzy and fading into unstable.

"No," he agrees softly. "The come-down shouldn't be that bad for you either."

"When will that happen?"

"In a few hours."

"Mm," your lips meld into a soft mumble, "You said that." His body weighs at the little cushion beneath you, head sinking beside yours, eyes still studying your face.

"I'm sorry." Your eyes slide to the side, a blurry picture of him, black pupils encompassing your field of view.

"'s the second time y' said that." It takes an inordinate amount of energy to shift your shoulders, before Spencer helps you roll to face him.

The hall is a bit more uneasy today, less certain, less consecrated as it usually feels. You didn't have a bad time, it was lovely, really, relaxing and painless. Mindless. But it wasn't expected. It wasn't familiar. It was a completely new door in a hall you hadn't realized you'd gone down. Unlike the one you keep coming back to that holds his office.

His office which hangs dark, empty. Your stomach turns over. The door into his lab room is open, spilling light out to beckon you.

The old, squeaky, rattling, thinly covered bed is gone. A cheap wooden bedframe sits in its place, a full mattress, a mess of linen sheets and soft pillows-- well-worn pillows. The room usually smells of disinfectant, but now it smells overwhelmingly of him.

A laptop sits at the foot of the bed.

The camera is already recording.

Dr. Reid lays beneath a thin sheet that doesn't allow any mistake that there's anything else between you and him. He watches with soft, inspecting eyes.

"I guess... I never thought you'd have a laptop," you mutter, letting your bag fall against the doorframe before you allow yourself to truly enter the subverted space.

"I can't store our experiments on my school desktop," he says simply, it's obvious, you already know it. And they're always yours, as much as he is the doctor, however many times over, he never gives himself more credit than he gives you. Without you, he'd have learned nothing. "I was feeling a little... Compunctious, maybe, about throwing you into our last test, and of course grateful that you accepted it-- so I- I thought you're due something more basic."

You take a seat just on the edge of the mattress, beside his outstretched toe.

"I always wonder what makes you come back every time... I was hoping I could somewhat test a theory of mine, though it's an imperfect experiment, I think you'll enjoy it."

"I don't need an injection this time?" Your eyes finally meet his. "No freezer, electricity, hypnosis? No little cheese cubes?" A deceptively pure smile cracks across his cheeks.

"I did get snacks and drinks, but no cheese cubes, sorry my lab rat." It isn't a diminutive name, he's never made you feel as a small creature, let alone outwardly referred to you as such, so hearing it feels akin to a personal affection.

"You got me snacks?" You laugh, now starting to inch away from his feet.

"You're gonna need them, or you'll at least need the hydration, I have kind of a- a marathon planned, so to speak, that's why I have the laptop, but I also have a few options for books, and a... Different library of digital media."

Your hand flattens over his chest, gently rising and sinking, though your touch breaks the calm demeanor a tinge, only in the acceleration of his heartbeat.

"Marathon?" The corner of his lip twitches upward briefly, almost too quickly to see it. You've learned from him.

"We always end up here anyway, I feel like I've sort of neglected this area of study." His arm spreads further outward to accommodate your body as it descends over him.

"What area is that?" He allows himself a slight grin now.

"Sexology." His eyes fall to your lips for a full second. "I want to know exactly what gets you off." You finally relinquish to the smile that's been brewing as your suspicions proved true, and crawl forward toward his lips.

A soft hand stops you before you can reach him.

"No kissing, I want you to use me, not as a partner... almost- almost as a toy, the only stimulus I'll be in control of is the videos." Your brow raises.

"Videos?" He glances down to the laptop at the foot of the bed, with a twitch at the corner of his lip.

"I have some, uh, pornography websites pulled up, a few different types of videos from them to see what you like best, then, well-- you know I record most of these, and I told you my theory before, but you might've forgotten, your brain was slightly frozen at the time." Your mind digs through the frosted memory.

"So I have to fuck you while watching you poke and prod at me?"

"Not if you can tell me, with absolute certainty, that it doesn't do anything for you." Your cheeks heat, despite how much you'd love to tell him just that. You'd be lying.

And he'd soon prove it, almost ten times over, with plenty of water breaks and a couple breaks for the fruit he'd brought. But with enough control that he'd only, quietly, reached the same high twice. Because it really is only science to him.

You'll never meet him outside of his office.

Hotch, for some reason or another, had been an absolute ass throughout the entirety of the case so far. Body tensed as if he were ready to pounce at any given moment, frown somehow more severe, and his eyes the definition of broody. Morgan had texted Garcia about it no less than three times but didn’t risk anymore in case Hotch got onto him about that too. He seemed to be waiting for something, like a shoe to drop, but didn’t even know what he was looking for. 

One thing was clear though; There was nothing to be found from the university. They left once that became clear, settling into their designated spot in the university police department's office. It felt odd to be surrounded by so many young people, hearing the way they talked to each other and bounced around one another. Lively, if a police department could be described as such. They had three bodies, dead end witnesses, and an invisible clock ticking behind them, reminding them that there wasn’t much time between this and the next victim. 

Unfortunately by day three the next victim had been picked: Natalie Clawson. A senior in the data science program, she had a job set up as a data analyst for Ulta Beauty. This time they call in the friend group, especially since two of them last saw her. Cameron, again, and then you. You who stands at the front of the group, hair blown out perfectly, your makeup sharp like the rest of your outfit. You’ve got a black mini skirt on over a pair of tights, a form fitting button down clinging to your figure, a blazer over your arm along with the Birkin bag you’re sporting, gold jewelry glinting off your ears, neck, and wrists, only one ring on your hand. Red bottom shoes and a scent like heaven clinging to you, you look highly unimpressed when they emerge. 

For a moment they still under the weight of your disgust that you haven’t even bothered to disguise, “Nice of you to show your face around here for once.”

Hotch sighs, head tilting back as he resists the urge to drag his hands down his face, “Can we please focus on the case for the moment? Everything else can come after.”

Wrong words to say judging by the way your glare sharpens, mouth pulling into a line that speaks of unfathomable disappointment, “Alright. Lead the way Sir.”

All around both parties exchange looks of absolute bafflement, shrugging shoulders as they attempt to piece together the information. Especially when you and Hotch wind up falling into step together, although you’re clearly agitated by him and he’s stuck between trying to concentrate or talking to you. There’s not a word said that could warm the frigid silence you and him have created around each other, spreading to everyone else as well. 

Once inside Hotch turns to look at you all, fingers already pointing, “Morgan take Cameron again, Emily, you can take her. We’ll interview the rest of them here.”

He turns to you, something like a plea in his eyes when you glare right back at him, “We just need information.”

You scoff, eyes already rolling in a way that surprises your friends. To them you’re the epitome of future lawyer, president, whoever. Clean cut lines, never a minute off the dot for meetings and deadlines, cold but present, passionate too, even if it shows in different ways. You don’t do things like roll your eyes, and they don’t ever see Hotch tilt his head back in such clear, obvious frustration that it’s almost jarring. 

“Just information is what you shall receive then. Let’s not waste time.”

The four of you leave the rest of them in confused but charged silence, one that Hotch doesn’t elaborate on any further as they start to talk to the friends. Camerons’ goes by quicker, mostly because they’ve already interviewed him before, and Emily? Well, she’s trying to get through to you but it’s like talking to a wall of steel. You give her clinically perfect answers, everything remembered clear as day and with all the details she could need. 

You’re innocent, that much is clear, and you’re also not going to let her dive deeper than that. She has the things she needs to know, but your personal life is made abundantly clear that it is just that; Personal. You don’t know her and she can profile you all she wants but she’s never going to get anywhere further than that. She comes back an hour later exhausted with her efforts knowing that she’s lost to a twenty-two year old college girl. 

Hotch raises his brow at you when you both return, “You gave her a hard time.”

You grab your blazer and purse, shrugging, “I gave her the information needed. Are we done now?”

“Technically we have what we can get, but there’s a few more things we need to go over. Did Natalie have any enemies or on the flipside, admirers?”

The purse gets set down with a thump, “Natalie was good and kind, she didn’t like Aiden Thomas because he’s arrogant, she didn’t like Shaera Kingsley because she’s stuck-up and sleeps her way to good grades, and she’ll sleep her way into a comfortable life. One where she’ll never amount to anything besides an occasional name on a check for a donation to charity. She didn’t like Julian Borough because he liked to hit on her even after she told him she wasn’t interested, but like clockwork he invites her to his frats party every two weeks whenever they throw. These are the three people she complained about the most and saw on a somewhat average basis. The closest to admirer and enemy she possessed.”

“What about professors, did she have good relationships with them?”

Your eyes flash, something dangerous there, “Freshman year she didn’t like Professor Angela Crone because of the way she graded things. Sophomore year she didn’t care for Professors Boeing and Chimney, Boeing for the way he taught and Chimney for his material, she thought he didn’t understand it correctly. Junior year her least favorite professor was Monoville, she had clashing opinions that were often verbalized. This past semester her least favorite is Professor Monroe for how he teaches, she thought it was incompatible for the majority of those taking his class, all the TAs she got along with.”

“Any conflicts in the friend group here with her?”

“Beyond skirmishes of who puked in whose car and if someone stood someone up there’s nothing that could reasonably result in something like this.”

“Friends outside of you all, did she have very many?”

“She’s in a sorority, pi beta phi, you should ask the sisters, or I can tell you and we can sit here for two hours talking about all her relationships with the sorority sisters and then we can go another four hours talking about where she stands with the other sororities, and tomorrow we can go over the frats. But just so you know in her sorority alone there’s 178 current members. If we factor in that there’s 1,893 sorority sisters on campus and 1,957 fraternity brothers then we’re looking at 3,850 relationships that go one on one alone. Then you factor in dynamics between a third variable that interrupts the one on one relationship because humans are unpredictable. You can be friends with someone on a solo level and not like each other in a group setting, sometimes vice versa. This leaves us with 7,419,000 possible relationship outcomes surrounding one person.”

Automatically they turned to look at Spencer, who was looking at you with something funny in his eye, like he’d struck gold as you were speaking, “Reid, is that right?”

He jolted, just for a second, cheeks pinkening at having been called out, “Yes, she’s correct, and that’s the simplified number too. We don’t have enough time to go over everything and ask all these people. We need to make an overall statement, might help narrow things down.”

You nod, finger tapping against your bag, “If you’re interested in watching how they’ll react to the news, separate them into their cliques. I trust you, the profilers, to figure out who goes with who. Do this for pi beta phi, kappa kappa gamma, and delta gamma. The rest of them can withstand a mass announcement if you go house to house. Do this, and you’ll have until approximately midnight before all of campus knows about your involvement with the case.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

His question makes you shrug, “Either you’ve finally found your seats for the unsubs show or you’ll figure it out. I hope that it’s the latter, now, is there anything else you all need from us? Or can I go get briefed on my case?”

Hotch perks up, just a bit, “You have a case?”

You don’t glare this time, you just look at him with that measured look that spells for a knife about to be twisted, “I’m a lawyer, didn’t you know that? Aren’t you happy you predicted me right?”

“I didn’t know you were still interested in pursuing law.”

“You don’t know what I’m interested in, period. You made sure of that too.”

“I know.”

For a second you simply stare at him, so clearly displeased, but then you turn on your heel to stride out the door, letting it slam shut behind you as you make your way out of the building. They watch you go, your imposing figure quickly vanishing into the foray of people, and then around the corner. Katalina, one of your close friends, peers at him, “You’re, you’re Agent Hotchner, aren’t you?”

He looks at the young woman, “What gave it away?”

“You both glare the same way. Like you’ll keep people away with it.”

Emily is the one to connect the dots, “She’s your daughter. Oh my god you have a daughter?”

Hotch sighs, standing as he does, “Yes, if she’ll even admit it.”

Morgan stares, then he looks at Spencer, who’s looking at Hotch funny, then back to said man, “She seemed ecstatic to see you again, I thought you and Haley had been married this whole time.”

“Not always, we dated in high school and broke up after college, I came out to San Francisco to be a prosecutor, I met her mother, we wound up having her, and then I left for the BAU…and Haley.”

Your friends wince but they stand up too, gathering their things and quietly muttering goodbyes as the team is left in an awkward, strained silence. He shuts his eyes briefly before clenching his hands once, then he smoothes them out, “I will tell you this once, and only once. I was in her life, consistently, and then I was not. I will not be answering any questions regarding our relationship, but she can do as she pleases.”

And that’s that. 

____________

Hotch knows it’s a bad idea to knock on your door, but he does it anyway. He hadn’t known what your face looked like as an adult until now and it’s hard to reconcile the idea of you, baby faced with your wild hair and dirt stained cheeks. With you now, sharp featured and dark lined lips, high heels and degrees under your belt despite being twenty-two and in your senior year of college (again). He paid for one semester of your college, always, which was how he knew where you were going, but beyond that he didn’t know anything. 

Part of him hadn’t expected to actually see you today, he’d thought you might accept under the condition that he not be there, but you’d shown up without protest. You had wanted to see him, despite it all. He knocks on the door, and you answer him a moment later. You’re still dressed as you were earlier but you’re no longer wearing the heels, those have been tucked away already. He smells something cooking from inside, something good and something that reminds him of the life he left behind, the life he traded. 

“Can I help you with something?”

He nods, glancing inside, “Can I come in?”

Your jaw works as you think it over before you step aside, letting him in. Your apartment isn’t what he expected, he’d thought you’d go for a minimalist look, something that fit the coldness rolling off of you. It’s a pleasant surprise when he sees the artwork displayed on the wall in alternating heights and placements, colorful flower arrangements displayed proudly with thick coffee table books scattered around the place. You’ve got pictures on display, deep reds, purples, your home is borderline whimsical. 

“Expecting somebody?”

“No.”

He slips his shoes off because you and your mother were always adamant about no shoes in the house. A rule that used to make you giggle. He remembered from when you were little, your chubby fingers prying at his laces that he’d purposely unlace slowly just to make you laugh with impatience and attempt to help or tug him inside. He’d given that up though, and now you won’t look him in the eye. He’s not even really welcomed into your apartment. 

If he stayed would he have a key to your apartment just for emergencies? Would his picture be up there beside the one of you and your mother? He doesn’t know, he’ll never figure it out either. Instead he turns his attention back to you, to your kitchen and whatever you’re cooking. There’s textbooks open, stacks of files open, scattered almost, but he sees the control in your chaotic spread, “What has your schooling looked like?”

He watches you tense, lips pursing for a minute as you stir the liquid in your pot, “I graduated high school at fourteen after six months of being there, I then went here, to Berkeley, for political science and psychology. I was…determined, to do as much as I could. I did two degrees in two years, went to law school, got it done in two years, I was eighteen when I finished. I spent nineteen as a public defender, then I came back to school so I could study linguistics and neuroscience.”

“What’s your IQ?”

“176, it matches my LSAT scores.”

“When did they conclude that you’re a genius?”

“When I turned eight.”

After you left. It goes unspoken, but it’s true. Hotch left when you were five for Seattle, he’d spend the next six years there, keeping contact consistently up until you were eleven, when he was transferred to the BAU in Quantico. It was after the transfer, after he reconnected with Haley (who was almost your middle name), communication started to fall apart. You were sixteen when it finally clicked in your head that he didn’t want anything to do with you, or at least you just weren’t high enough on his list of priorities to keep up with. You were sixteen and graduating from UC Berkeley with two degrees under your belt and he didn’t show up to it. He’d left the seat empty, so you stopped saving one for him. 

He’d gone to UC Berkeley for his degree, and you followed him in his footsteps because no matter what you did you just couldn’t escape him or his legacy that literally flowed through your veins. You were a prosecutor for a year, just enough to help with bills and gain experience. Then you did school for the past few years while simultaneously juggling cases. You lived a very, very busy life, but you wouldn’t have it any other way either. 

“You’ve done well for yourself.”

The praise makes you shudder. It’s something you’ve craved for so long and learned to resent when it wasn’t given. All you had wanted was for him to say you were doing well, that he was proud, that he wished he could be there to celebrate your accomplishments. What you got was 2,833 miles between you and him, empty voicemails and a number that sat untouched on your contacts list. Strained silence despite the lack of the others presence, now it was oppressive, unbearable. 

You regret letting him in, seeing the face that isn’t yours but it belongs to you standing right outside your door, pleading to be let in. He doesn’t belong in your space, it’s made clear from the way he stands between the chairs on your island and the couch, unsure of where he should be. Part of you wants to throw your hands in the air, tell him to get the hell out because you needed bim then but you don’t need him now. The other part is still the little girl who waited by the door for her dad to come home but he never did, the girl who waited by the phone for it to ring and cried herself to sleep when the chime you set for him never came through. 

“How’s Virginia?”

How’s Haley? Hotch doesn’t even know where to begin, if he should even bring up the existence of his son. He doubts you’d react well to it, so he keeps his mouth shut even if he might regret it later, “Virginia is fine, it’s different than theWest coast, the people are faster, sharper. You’d fit in over there.”

Except you wouldn’t fit in over there because that’d mean fitting into Hotch’s life and you both know you don’t. You’re the estranged daughter, the genius he helped make but couldn’t raise, the product of a relationship that shouldn’t have happened. The clothes you wear, the way you carry yourself, that could make you an East coaster, but it’s your existence that prohibits it from happening, even if you want to leave for the other side. 

“I thought about DC.”

Warily, he takes a seat at the island, “But you’re not going there yet.”

You shake your head, “No, not yet, there’s more degrees I want to get first.”

“You sound like Spencer, except he’s stopped at five.”

“I intend to out-degree him.”

“I’ll be sure to tell him that, he might take it as a challenge.”

“You can tell him I’ll win it then.”

Spencer intrigues you. A fellow genius with a slightly higher IQ than you, it doesn’t matter to you though. You’re doing what you need to do and as long as he doesn’t interfere with that then you can peacefully co-exist with him. Now if your father could stop interfering with your life as it is now, you’d be peaceful too. (You wouldn't, you know it to be too truthful to admit to though). 

“You’ve grown up.”

It’s truthful too, and you hate that. You’ve grown up, you wear bras and pencil skirts, you line your lips and fill it in with gloss, you blowout your hair every morning and you drink protein shakes for breakfast. There’s case files on your counter, Birkin bag on the counter spilling with notes and evidence. Wine on your kitchen counter, floor cleaned and living room tidy. Your bills are paid, you graduate (again) in a semesters’ time, you’re what any young adult aspires to be. 

Healthy, well maintained, comfortable. Yet distinctly isolated despite the friends you’ve made and unattainable to most people around you. They aren’t allowed to see the depth of what you’re feeling, they don’t get to come close enough to offer comfort even when you desperately need it. You prefer it that way though, you dislike when people can see through your cool facade, you hate it even more when they call you on it too. If you could, you’d prefer to be thought of as something almost inhuman, more robot than flesh, simply because it’d mean people would stop trying to get into your head and see what lies there. 

Profilers, you think, are some of the worst people in the world simply because their whole job description is reading people. Your father read you easier than a book when you were younger and you doubted much had changed despite the distance between you both. The rest of his team could read you too and you’d be a fool to think otherwise, but it didn’t mean you had to be open or talk about things. They could know, but it’d also never be acknowledged. 

“I have.”

You grab two bowls, because you’re not going to be rude and eat alone in front of him, and also because now he has no choice but to eat what you’ve cooked. The rice goes first, then the curry, then the chicken you’ve put in the oven to drain off oil and keep warm. He blinks when you hand him the bowl, surprised, especially when water comes with it, but he thanks you anyway as you take a seat beside him. It gives you the urge to flee, but you’re not going to run away after agreeing that you’ve grown up because that’d be childish. 

“You’ve inherited your mother’s skill in the kitchen.”

Simple words, a simple compliment, a reminder of the life he threw away. Your parents had been in love, you knew that much, you saw it with the way they kissed when coming home, how they took care of each other during the long hours and rough cases. The life they’d made with you was good too, Hotch had doted on you as a child, had loved you and done what he could to make sure you knew that. They’d been young when they had you -an accident- and your mother always made sure to tell you she’d do it all over again if given the choice. 

Five years your family had been wonderful. Tight-knit and loving, they’d discussed marriage, they’d been engaged, they talked about giving you a sibling. Then the Seattle profiler branch had called and everything had come crashing down within the span of a month. One week your dad was there, the next he wasn’t, and from that point on it was more wasn’t than was and part of you still doesn’t know how to bridge the two together. Now he’s here eating curry in your apartment when you’re twenty-two and supposedly thriving. He knows better though. 

Hotch sees it in the way you carry yourself, the hard set of your jaw and mouth that things aren’t as perfect as you work for them to be. You’re weighed down by your own consciousness, as if existence is a chore for you to deal with on a daily basis. Lost, he should say, you look lost. Lost in the way that Hotchner’s look, because you and him are one in the same. Feelings of internal strife and conflict are dealt with by throwing yourselves into work as a distraction for the truth of what’s really there. Hotch knows you’re like this because he’s like this, and you took after him more than either of you cared to admit. 

“Haley and I are getting divorced.”

There goes his resolve at being level-headed, about easing into things with you. Because when it comes to you there’s no rhyme or reason, it’s you, and therefore everything he’s so precariously balanced is thrown off of its axis. You’d been talented at doing that to him from the moment of your conception and it seemed that distance nor time managed to take that away from you. 

“Really?”

“Mhm. How’s your mother?”

You blink twice, processing, “Mama’s fine, she’s ah, divorced now.”

Hotch hadn’t even known about your stepfather, he hadn’t known anything since he resolved to stay out of your life as much as he could. He knew he’d hurt you badly and as a form of penance decided to ignore the details of your life despite being able to access all of it if he wanted to. It felt wrong to invade your privacy like that though, it felt wrong to keep tabs on you and not call you. 

“Really? How long?”

“Two years now, and it’s a good thing, she’s over it now too which helps.”

“If I saw her do you think she might kick me or eviscerate me?”

Against your will a tiny, amused, huff leaves you. Hotch’s sense of humour wasn’t extensive by any means, but the dry wit you’d inherited allowed you to tell when he was trying to be at least a little humorous. Your mother had always said that if he cheated, or if he fucked up bad enough she’d eviscerate and castrate him all in one go. 

“I think she might get you banned from the state of California.”

“At the very least San Francisco.”

The rest of dinner isn’t as tense as it was when he first came in, despite the layer of tension and discomfort of it all. He does the dishes because you’ve cooked and for a minute you imagine that this is what your entire life has looked like. Like your dad comes over once a week for dinner and cleans because you’ve cooked and you two get to discuss cases, analyze human behavior, talk about how screwed up the world is. Bathe in the satisfaction of putting these people away, helping other innocent people find peace or protection, you enjoy that, you do. 

The spell is broken once the last dish is set to dry and he turns to you, confusion about how to proceed etched in each line of his face, and you realize it’s up to you how this will go. You clear your throat, shifting as you reach for all the right words. As always when it comes to your father you find yourself frustrated with the amount of things you want to say but can’t proceed correctly when using them. Words are your strong suit, they’re your safety net and when it comes to him you have none whatsoever. It infuriates you, even makes you want to cry. 

“Will you keep me updated on Natalie?”

He nods, “I will, and can I ask you to be a consultant for this case? You know the student body better than anybody on campus, and with your memory you’d likely be able to help us trace things that we would overlook. You can say no of course if it’d be too much, but I do think you’d be a valuable asset for the team.”

Will you spend time with me? Will you let me be present just this once? I’m sorry for leaving you, come with me one more time? These are all the questions layered under professionalism and as his daughter, his firstborn, you know these questions by heart years later. He’d taught you to read between the lines and hear what wasn’t spoken, listen to the silence and see what it had to say. 

“I’m up for it. I’ll inform my professors that I’ll be taking the week off to act as a consultant for the BAU in regards to the case of multiple murders on campus.”

“Thank you, I’m sure the rest of the team will be interested in getting to know you, Reid in particular has shown interest.”

Your lips twitch upwards, just a bit, “We’re geniuses, it’s natural to be interested in figuring out the other genius in the room.”

“Just don’t try to outcompete one another for intellect.”

“No promises.”

He lingers at the door, trying to find what to say until he settles on, “I’ll see you tomorrow then, goodnight.”

You lock the door behind him, relief flooding through your veins when you hear his footsteps fading away down the hall. On a side note you notice your hands are trembling, heart racing and body warm in a way it usually isn’t. Uncomfortable, yes, and most certainly anxiety inducing. Dinner with your father, it’s a sentence you thought you’d never say again after you turned eighteen and yet it happened anyway. He ate your curry, he’s divorcing Haley, he’s in Berkeley, one of your best friends is missing, there’s a case to read on your coffee table, and you’re going to be a consulting member to your fathers fancy FBI team. 

You need to send some emails. 

_____________

The next morning you come in with a cup of coffee, perfectly blown out hair, and a new outfit this time. You’re in black business pants, the baggy kind that sits just right and shows what it needs but not too much. This time you’re in a black, sleeveless halter neck blouse, gold jewelry all over your body and makeup once again done to perfection. You come in smelling like apples, lemon, brown sugar, and rain all rolled into one, a perfectly intoxicating fall scent that leaves heads turning as you walk. 

Now that they look at you and Hotch they see the similarities they didn’t before. The severity of both your expressions like a mirror, the hair. If you’d inherited one physical trait from Hotch it had to be the hair. Soft and sleek like raven feathers, the exact shade of his sprouting from your own head. Everything else is your mothers, or just you. Your bag gets set down, your coat put up and with that you take a seat at the table as if you’ve always belonged there. 

Hotch gestures to you as he stands at the board, the one filled with evidence and possible connections, “As we’ve noticed Miss. Hotchner is in the room with us, she’ll be acting as a consultant for this case not only for her connections to the latest victim but for the connections to the university as well. Feel free to ask her questions pertaining to the case or student body, she’ll likely have the answer. She also knows this campus well, use that to your advantage.”

He begins to brief them, and by extension you, on what they’ve gathered so far, and what they’re going to do for the day. You’ll be going with Spencer and Emily to interview Natalie’s professors, the TAs included, and once that’s done you’ll come back to discuss. You’re thankfully not in heels this time as you lead the two of them around campus, pointing certain things out as you walk. The campus is big and crowded, students milling about in every direction, you pay no mind to it though. 

Emily walks behind you and Spencer, who asks about each building even though he knows the history of them, and then about the professors, the classes that you even take. She hides her amusement carefully, opting to listen in on your careful explanations, you keep things concise where Spencer would usually start rambling, another Hotchner trait you’ve seemingly inherited. You both walk step in step together and it’s fitting she thinks. Two geniuses dressed like runway models for whatever reason walking the campus to solve a murder case. It feels almost like a movie in far too many ways. 

It’s a little strange watching two geniuses interact, both of you feeding off of one another in ways she can’t hope to keep up with. Ideas and theories bouncing off of one another, facts recited in perfect detail and discussions about things she knows neither of you specialize in but clearly know well enough to have opinions. You’re warmer like this, when you’re in your element called academia and more importantly, not in the same room as Hotch. She doesn’t know what happened between you two, she won’t pry, but something had shifted between the reunion from yesterday to today. As if there was some unspoken agreement to get along. 

Eventually the three of you dip into a building, you know the layout from when Natalie showed you around, the sleek interior, the empty corridors. You take them to Professor Mardi first, she has no classes for an hour so they’ll have time to talk. It’s odd, walking the same path that Natalie did, she’d walked the halls like this at least twice a week. She walked it with friends, by herself, soaked in rain or fresh from her apartment on a perfect hair day. Now she’s missing and you wonder if she’ll ever walk the halls again. 

You try not to think about what might be happening with her now, where she might be and who might be doing something to her. There’s no point in dwelling with thoughts like that, it won’t help find her. Instead you push the door open to her classroom that’s just emptied out, her projector off, files being sorted together. She looks up when the three of you enter, eyes widening in surprise, “Miss. Hotchner, I wasn’t expecting to see you today.”

Her voice grates on you, soft and motherly as if she has the right to act like that with you, “I’m here as a consultant with the FBI to look into the recent happenings on campus, they’d like to speak with you about Natalie Clawson.”

“She went missing yesterday, right?”

“She did.”

“I’m terribly sorry, Miss. Hotchner, I know you two are close.”

“No apology needed, are you amenable to a conversation?”

“Of course! Come, sit, sit.”

For three hours you lead the pair of FBI agents around to talk with professors and state your reasoning, Spencer and Emily observe, they ask seemingly random questions but you know better. You know that the preferred color of socks can tell you all about somebody's insecurities or where their ideals lay. You know that certain products that people will use often feature a common factor that they subconsciously associate with themselves, which often shows you more than they’d care to know. Hotch taught you all of this when you were little, and when he left you continued to apply the skills until it became second nature. 

At lunch you all meet up again, except this time you all are hungry and there’s nothing anybody can do when hungry. Hotch turns to you, expectant, “Pick a place, we’ll go eat there.”

You raise a brow, “Budget?”

“The government.”

“Are we going to take one of your SUVs?”

He sighs, “Yes, we can take the SUV.”

“Great, we’re going to Baozi.”

Hotch, inexplicably, gets this look on his face like he wants to shoot himself in the kneecaps rather than go to Baozi, wherever that is, “And you’re driving.”

“Of course I am.”

He says it like it’s the most depressing fact on Earth, as if there’s not pictures of corpses pinned up behind him. You, on the other hand, look as pleased as you can be in this situation. Spencer siddles up next to you, already asking things about something or another that distracts you well enough on the way towards the car, where there’s the unspoken agreement that you’re in the passenger seat. They can at least understand the gift that is Hotchner family drama, even Spencer knows this, and so they without protest climb into the SUV all as one. 

“Do you still eat there often? Baozi?”

You hum, adjusting your bracelets as you do, “I eat there for whenever I graduate. So I guess I’m due for another visit in about eight months.”

“I see.”

The drive is borderline painful for the two of you up in the front, you fiddle with your jewelry, Hotch fights the urge to crash the car. Baozi. You’d gone there frequently as a kid but specifically with Hotch. He’d take you on the rare times it was just you and him, usually on the days when your mother had something important to do that day. It was a ritual you both had fallen into and it was a ritual that transitioned into every time he came to visit you, the two of you would go. 

It’s thankfully not far and when you enter there’s a middle-aged Taiwanese woman whose eyes crinkle when she sees you, a grin splitting her face when she pulls you into a tight hug, “My, my, look how beautiful you’ve grown! It’s been nearly three years, but there’s no graduation today, so what’s the occasion?”

Your head tilts towards Hotch, “He’s in town.”

Her eyes widen, jaw parting as she stares at Hotch before she swats him with her shoe in the next instance “You! YOU! You leave my two girls alone, never showing your face, always busy, busy, BUSY! You show your face now? Huh?”

You chortle, one hand coming to her arm to steady her, “We’re working on it, and trust me he’s been groveling, I’m making him grovel more too. Hence why we’re here.”

She laughs, her amusement infectious, “Okay, okay, only if you insist though, let’s get you to the round table.”

“Thank you.”

You follow her to the table, settling in easily with Hotch on one side and Spencer on the other. You know what you’re getting, Hotch knows too, and neither of you bother with opening up the menus because of that. It looks the exact same as it did from when you were a child. With peeling red booths and orange walls, there’s glass with faded paintings of pandas on it. Stereotypical but charming in a way that’s well loved throughout the passage of time. Your memory allows you to relieve them, and times spent in Baozi are some of the ones you revisit often, even if you don’t try to think about it very often. 

It feels strange to be making a new memory like this, not reliving one from a time long ago. If you look to the left you can see a five year old you learning how to hold chopsticks while the guy beside you teaches it to you. Fingers unfailingly gentle as he directs your tiny fingers to work the wood properly. You’d gotten the hang of it eventually, but it took time, and now they come as natural as breathing to you. There’s no need for the rubber band trick anymore. 

You order for the group seeing how you’re the only one capable of speaking Mandarin, for a while you content yourself with listening to the team tell their stories, discuss possible theories and try to pinpoint who the unsub might be. It’s a lot, but you soak up every word of it. The jargon reminds you of the stories Hotch would use when he put you to bed, his words never softened for you, and maybe that’s why you’re so smart. Maybe it’s because you were put to bed with legal jargon as a lullaby, human behavior as a soothing ailment to your restless mind. 

The food comes looking delicious as ever, and this is where you falter, just for a second. Hotch doesn’t say a word when he slides over a little dish made up of ginger, soy sauce, vinegar, a dash of fish oil, and a heaping spoon full of chili oil. You’re the one with the rarest memory on Earth, and he’s remembered how you make your dipping sauce for xiao long bao and other dumplings. He couldn’t call you, but he remembered how to make your dumpling oil combination as if it were a written down recipe he’d memorized. 

He confuses you like nothing else ever has. An absent father who felt a step away, never there when you needed him to be, yet there’s an invisible list of facts about you in his head that he’d never forgotten. The familiar anger of his abandonment rises in you, risky and for a second, uncontrollable, but then you bite into the dumpling, the sauce combination being the first thing you taste. It’s vinegary, spicy, salty, you feel the cut of ginger and it’s perfect. Instead of wanting to hit him you want to cry. 

There’s the other thing: He left, and you stopped crying. You already felt weak from him leaving and you weren’t going to feel weak for yourself. It was something you couldn’t afford to happen because you needed strength to make up for what he had stolen from you. So you didn’t cry, but when you bite into that dumpling you feel the urge to do so. It rises up sharply, quicker than you expected, and yet you refuse to give in. You won’t give the satisfaction of giving in. 

To them it’s clear Hotch is struggling too, making them wonder if this was the way you two liked to punish yourselves. Hotch by giving you control, and you for picking someplace you knew would pack a punch for the both of you. You remember everything in perfect clarity from the past, you remember what he’d said to you, the way he dressed, the thing you ordered to drink. You remembered the emotion too, when you were so pleased, so proud to be sitting at the table with him. The feeling of being loved by him, your subconscious reassurance that it’d be like this forever. 

He remembers sitting with you in the booths, teaching you how to use chopsticks, watching you graduate from the white foam cups to the plastic ones they used. If he knew what he knows now, would he trade it for what could’ve been with you? Would he stay with you, watching you grow from not the sidelines but the front row, would he sit still or would he fidget? The man hadn’t even bought a ticket. 

You sit behind him in stilted silence, nothing but memory and muscle to keep you going. Neither of you can look at each other, the misery of each other’s company too much to fight against. It’s not the right place to ask questions, there’s not enough time for explanation. Your friend is missing, you’re eating lunch with your dad again for the first time in forever in the restaurant that had forgotten his face but felt the weight of his absence, and you’re truly, stunningly, miserable. 

It’s the kind of misery that you hadn’t let yourself dwell in for a long while. You’d felt it the first time he missed your birthday, or the tenth time that he didn’t pick the phone up. Over the course of time you’d learnt to swallow it down until it stopped coming back up. This you can’t ignore though, not when the origin is sitting less than a foot away from you and the tray of dumpling dip sits innocently between the two of you. You have him here, now, in a stolen moment brought upon by the disappearance of your friend and the murder of three other girls on campus. Because it seems the only time he’s there is when it’s convenient for him. 

The team watches you both fall into the trap that is history the longer lunch goes on. There's a familiar rhythm between you two but it’s clear that it’s a routine neither is comfortable participating in any longer. They’ve never seen Hotch so quiet, so guilty, and you’re the stranger that’s familiar to them in the most confusing of ways. You and Hotch are one in the same, daughter and father separated by bad choices and the lack of time despite the way it drags on from days to weeks to months to years. 

There’s the way you both eat the same, calculated dips and perfectly placed bites, neither of you willing to step outside of the dance you two know. You look nothing like Hotch and yet when you glare, when you move a certain way, it’s all Aaron and that jars them in ways they didn’t expect. They’ve seen Jack, the subtle markers that tell them he’s Aaron Hotchner’s son, but you? You. You’re different, you’re grown up and even though there’s that distance, the knowledge that you didn’t get to watch him as you grew so you could mimic his mannerisms but they’re just built in you from the get go. That’s something else entirely. 

Spencer knows. He knows because he knows when there’s another kid whose dad abandoned them too early, he sees you in him and what you are because five years ago he was you. A genius doing well for themself, thriving at a glance because why wouldn’t you be thriving? You’re working with a law firm, you’re getting two more degrees under your belt, you’ll have PhDs by 25 without a doubt. You live in a nice apartment, you wear red bottoms and the jewelry clinking off your wrist is pure gold, heavy and thick with luxury. By all means, you’re walking perfection. 

He knows better though. You’re just pieces of a body stapled together and wound so tightly you can’t fall apart. It’s not thriving, it’s survival. You busy yourself with so many things because if you don’t then you’ll have to feel things you can’t let yourself feel for fear of them taking control over your body and most importantly, your mind. Your mind, the most crucial thing your body has to offer, brilliance encased through a layer of bone and thick skin not easily exposed to the world. If you can’t control that, then it means you control nothing. 

This is something Spencer knows intimately, he understands it, he understands you. At least on this particular aspect. Seeing you with Hotch makes him wonder about what would happen if he sat down for lunch with William Reid. Would they hold their forks the same? Would they reach for certain sauces or would they have completely different flavor pallets? It makes him wonder when he sees you two over there. Different tastes in food but similar mannerisms, it’s like you two don’t want to be anything like the other but your subconsciouses refuse to allow that truth to come true. 

Thinking is difficult when it comes to you and Hotch, this much is apparent. Difficult for you and him simply because of everything that is laid between the two of you. Difficult for the team because Hotch has never been so out of it, so confused before, all because of you, the physical manifestation of a different life. West coast versus East, daughter versus son, prosecutor versus profiler. Nobody can truly wrap their heads around it all. 

Lunch ending is a celebration, it means that the case moves forward, that nobody is exuding an air of such downtrodden grief that it roots their hearts in their stomachs. It’s easier to talk about murder with Hotch than school or what you’re doing with your life. He finds it easier to question your memory, the sequence of events, than ask if you prefer to party or stay inside. He can’t profile you, he refuses, and even though the team wants to profile you it feels wrong. Besides that, you won’t let them profile you. 

You’ll let them see what you’re willing to show but beyond that it’s all clinical detachment or attachment. Returning back to campus is a strained affair, not that you acknowledge it when you all set up shop again in the room the PD gave them. You bring your laptop out, immediately throwing yourself into the art of homework as Spencer sits next to you so he can read through the information for things that they might’ve missed. You of course can’t have access to everything, but you know enough, and if you really wanted to you could find out. 

Which is what you’ve busied yourself in doing. You want the details, you want locations, pictures, all of it. Hotch wouldn’t give it to you, not the nitty gritty details that you need in order for all of it to work out. It’s laughably easy to get access to it all, dates, names, locations, coroners exams. If Penelope on the other end knows you’re there she hasn’t called to tell you to get out. Naturally, you dig, and you dig, and you dig. 

Because you’re a lawyer, you’re a Hotchner, and digging is what you do. 

____________

When you hear a knock on your door you half expect it to be Hotch, the other half expects a friend. You don’t expect it to be Spencer Reid standing on the other side, his fingers are slotted together loosely, held at his chest, bag slung over his shoulder as he rocks on his feet. His hair’s messier than it was earlier, tie a little crooked, “Can I come in?”

You step aside easier for him than Hotch, and upon noticing the shoes at the doorway he slides his off as well, “Does he know you’re here at my apartment?”

Spencer winces at the mention of your father, you won’t even say dad, or father, or biological unit, but also because, “No, I didn’t think he’d appreciate that.”

Hotch would most certainly not appreciate it. Doesn’t matter that you and him are estranged and this is the weird pause on that, doesn’t matter that you’re both two adults and you can decide who you want to talk to. For Spencer your dad is still his boss, and the last thing he wants to do is piss the guy off when he’s clearly already emotionally compromised. 

Something shifts as soon as the words come out of his mouth. It’s not a break in the case that he’s come knocking on your door about, but something personal. You move into the kitchen, pulling two wine glasses from your shelf before peering into the small wine cabinet the apartment had built into it, “Red or white?”

“Why don’t you guess?”

You’re the kid of a legendary profiler helping them with their case, he’d be surprised if you didn’t know the basics of profiling, “You like red, but the sweeter ones that taste like berries after they’ve been warmed by the sun. Aged, because you prefer the way things taste after they’ve had time to develop an edge. You don’t like dry wines because it sucks everything sweet about it out.”

Then you look at him whilst holding a bottle up of something older, something more expensive than he’d care to think about with a little twitch to your lips, “I think I might have one that you like.”

You pour it perfectly even, graceful in the way it doesn’t slosh when you turn around to hand a glass to him before settling on your couch, letting him follow your lead. It’s sunset now on the bay, which you have a lovely view of from your big windows. The apartment isn’t by any means low to the ground, with tall buildings framing your vision and the gold tinted water in the distance, you’ve certainly earned this particular view. 

“You didn’t come here because of the case.”

Statement, fact, not a question in your voice, just a prompt for him to start talking. It’s very Hotchner of you to do that, he notes, but he doesn’t dare say it out loud, not yet at least, “I came because you’re a fellow genius, you know how rare that is.”

More statement over question. With two geniuses in the room the word is absolute, “So you came for my brain?”

He tilts his head, there’s a subtle layer of mischief in your tone, as if you’re testing the waters with him, “I came because I wanted to see what a genius does to shut their brain off. I never really, I wasn’t like you when I was in college. I didn’t make friends, I didn’t have a presence in the university besides being a prodigy and proving that I could handle myself just fine. You do though, you can blend in just fine with the rest of the population.”

Your eyebrows raise a bit, “You’re asking me what I do for fun.”

His cheeks flush, just a little bit, “Yes.”

“Do you swear none of this gets back to Quantico?”

An opening, not one he intends to waste, “Yes. I swear.”

“And you’re wearing….the world’s best teachers assistant outfit I’ve ever seen in my life. Sweater vest, khakis, permanent helmet hair, if you want to blend in, we need to find you something different to wear.”

“Where exactly are we going?”

Your smile widens, just a bit as you raise the glass to your lips, “Out.”

Then the wine is going down the hatch, and in an effort to keep up Spencer tilts his head back too. You shouldn’t be doing this, going out when Natalie is somewhere out there, maybe dead, maybe alive, probably in pain. But there’s a plan in your mind too, the unsub has clearly been attracted to girls with dark hair and striking features. Beautiful, young, going places and in college. Technically, you fit that description to a textbook definition. 

Two days before Natalie had gone missing -Thursday- you and her had gone out for a night on the town. You remember the night, the faces you had seen, you want to find familiar ones, because if you do then you can find these faces, run your tests, maybe you can narrow it down. It’s something you need to do, and it doesn’t matter if you’re drunk, you might black out in the moment, but when you sober up you’ll remember it. At least it’s how it works for you. 

Spencer follows you to your bedroom, your big, wonderful bedroom with the bed unmade and fragrances crowded together on a nightstand that you don’t use. Warm lighting, and a different view of the city. This one is into the city itself, bright twinkling lights, the cars passing below, it’s a sight that’ll haunt you just as much as it brings you peace. Your bed is pushed up next to it, especially with the way the window wraps around to the other side of the wall, it’s insane, and so incredibly worth it. 

You work on him first, having him sit on your bed as he thinks about what you might do to him. Because even at lunch when it was so clear that you and Hotch were one in the same for certain things, he knows that you’ve come into yourself in ways that Hotch would never dream of. You’ve grown up without him, you’re not him. Hence why you tell him to run his fingers through his hair, mess it up a little and to please, please, ditch the sweater vest. He does as told, going so far as to remove his tie as well. 

“These will be too big on you, but it’ll work, so wear these.”

He’s handed a pair of your business slacks, they’re already loose on you so he knows he’ll be almost drowning in them himself, but he does as told, emerging a few minutes later from your bathroom holding the fabric up for dear life. He’d really like to avoid accidentally dropping his pants in front of you. It makes your teeth poke through when you see him though, a soft snort leaving you as you take the tie he discarded to turn it into a belt. Then for the final touch his shirt gets unbuttoned a little bit, just enough to let go for a second. 

But after him it’s your turn, and he sits on the bed while you move around your room to assemble an outfit together. It takes thirty minutes, but once you’re done you emerge in all of your early twenties glory. A halter top with no back, no front either if he’s honest, there’s just mesh that flows around you except it splits in the middle to show off your smooth skin and belly button. The top of it too is low, your tits pushed up and a golden sun charm right in the center. You pair it with jeans that cling to your curves, widening after the knee to brush your feet and floor. 

You’re gorgeous, and he definitely shouldn’t be thinking of that but the wine is buzzing pleasantly in his mind, and from an objective point of view, you are beyond a simple aesthetically pleasing description. He watches you as you select your shoes, your jewelry, even the perfume on the nightstand. There’s something captivating about how you move around your space, a fluidity to your movements that speaks of practice and excitement. 

“You go out often.”

“Mm, I do.”

Once you’re done with that you grab your shoes and lead him back to the kitchen where this time you’re grabbing two shot glasses, “You wanted to know how I blended in, well I’ll tell you I don’t usually start with wine, although it’s better at getting people drunk than anybody ever acknowledges.”

Spencer can attest from the slight disconnect between his mind and body, the little lag between his thoughts. He’s not a lightweight, but he’s also not a heavy drinker by any means. Liquor like the one you’re pouring into those little cups is something Spencer rarely indulges in. He’s not like Morgan who takes it with a grin and a kiss and maybe a little something more because alcoholic shots spell for a good time in his opinion. 

“So what are you poisoning us with instead?”

You glance at him as you prepare chasers, you know he won’t do well without one, “The simple stuff; Tequila.”

Tequila isn’t simple stuff in his book, but to you, to a good chunk of the student population, tequila is simple. Tequila comes in the form of cheap indulgence for long lasting effects, it comes with blurred memories and a weightless feeling that young people chase when they start to feel the heavy weight of adulthood creeping in too close for their liking. Spencer indulged in classic literature, puzzles, things that fed his brain until it was too stuffed to take anymore. Not tequila. 

He drinks it though, drinks it when he knows he shouldn’t because he’s got a job to do and it feels kind of like New Orleans. In that bar when he had a plane to catch but missed on purpose. Except this time he isn’t missing anything because this is where he’s supposed to be. He’s blending in and he came here for multiple reasons, but amongst them was to try and profile you without profiling you. So he supposes getting to know you is the better term for it. 

You and him take three shots before you grab your purse, the going out one, and together you both head out to the streets of San Francisco. It’s a city he’d thought about going to, he liked the idea of it. Closer to his mother, closer to familiar things, but ultimately he’d gone to Quantico, to Virginia and Washington D.C. and became a profiler there. But the glimpse at what it could’ve been is nice, especially when he can smell your scent of coffee, vanilla, cherry, and chocolate. 

The thoughts of your beauty, of you in general are only amplified with the alcohol coursing through his veins. It’s wrong, he knows it’s wrong, but from the moment you’d walked through those doors like hell was in the palm of your hand he’d been captivated. Power and precision drove you to the top of the food chain, a place you were most comfortable being, and he liked it. He liked the way you never lowered your gaze to anybody, unafraid of inviting discomfort to the floor. 

He follows your lead when you pull him into a little ramen restaurant in an alley he’d never think of looking into, but he’s drunk and admittedly hungry so he goes without thinking too much about it. You and he get sat in a small booth where you both have to take your shoes off and settle on the seating which consists of a low table, pillows so neither of your asses go numb, and a private divider between the outside of the booth and inside. Like a personal little bubble, he stretches out because he can, and he’s too drunk to think not to. 

“So what’s this place?”

You hand him a menu, “Furikake, can you read Japanese?”

“Mmm, not right now, which isn’t great because the whole menu’s in Japanese.”

He sits up again, slouching onto the table as he peers at the words written down. Everything’s done by hand, the paper crisp and worn in his hold but most certainly legible. It’s clear that the restaurant is old but beloved, and well maintained despite its location, “What is this place? It feels…not San Francisco.”

He watches your lips twitch again, “Furikake is one of the older Japanese restaurants around here, and real Japanese too, not the Americanized version of it. Fresh fish, fresh ingredients, they opened up in the seventies and became a community staple. They have English menus, but you have to ask for one. So it gives you two options, you can either try and figure it out yourself, or you can go through the embarrassment of asking for an English menu. What have you, Doctor Reid?”

Spencer pouts, he won’t admit that he is but he most definitely is regardless. Cheeks puffed out and mouth set in a distinctive line, he can’t read Japanese, he can read, speak, and write in Korean (specifically South), but not Japanese. You know Mandarin, English, now Japanese, and he’s interested to know in any others you might have up your sleeve. For now though he pouts because he doesn’t know and that’s unusual for him. 

“I’ll let you order for me, yeah?”

It’s an easy solution, but you give him a pass since he’s clearly feeling the glass of wine and shots from earlier. Once there’s food in his stomach he’ll settle some more and then he’ll be ready, but in the meanwhile you’ll give him some leniency. The waitress comes by not long after, her smile warm when she greets you and her laughter delicate when you point at Spencer and order for him. He should be embarrassed but the alcohol just makes him laugh, it’s funny even though it’s at his expense. If it makes you crack a grin then you’re happy with it. 

He hopes that somewhere at the end of the night he can make you smile, but Hotchner’s are so difficult when it comes to expressing enjoyment. Yet again another trait you’d inherited from Hotch. He doesn’t even know what to call you sometimes, Miss. Hotchner, little Hotchner, he’s definitely not calling you Hotch. Hotch and Hotchner. Two different things, and nobody ever says Hotchner in full when referencing your father. It doesn’t feel right though, like Hotchner doesn’t fit you, at least not yet. 

He looks up at you from where he’s spilling over the table, hazel eyed bambi through and through as he thinks for a second how you look like an angel with the light behind you making a halo. He shouldn’t be here, drunk and in a private booth with you. Daughter of his boss, an academic equal, he’s curious, always curious, especially about you. He’d asked what a genius like you did for fun, and you’re getting him drunk for a night on the streets. He’d be a fool to think you’d stop at a hole-in-the-wall of San Francisco whilst drunk, not when the sun had just gone dark. It’d be cooler outside now than it was earlier, maybe even with a drizzle. 

“What’d you order us?”

You give him a look, like he isn’t fooling anybody with his drunken haze, “I got us a few things, you’ll see when they get here, I’ll explain as we eat.”

“Are we sharing?”

“Of course we are, food was made to share with people.”

He blinks, it’s not a Hotchner answer, but something else entirely, “Did your mother raise you by those ideals?”

You nod, “She did, and I’m guessing nobody knows who she is?”

“Nuh-uh.”

“I’ll show you a picture then.”

He blinks again when you pull out a flat screened phone from your bag, swiping a few times to gain access before showing him a picture. The quality isn’t bad, good lighting even though the details aren’t as good as the naked eye but nonetheless it’s a photo of high definition, “Is that the iPhone? They came out with those earlier this year.”

“Mhm, we pre-paid for ours so we didn’t have to worry about not getting one when they were released.”

“I didn’t know you were rich like that. I thought the red bottoms and fancy jewelry was from your earnings as a prosecutor. Since you’re in the Bay Area they pay you higher, for a woman of your talents they pay higher. But you said “our” which indicates multiple people, you go to school, Berkeley of all places, you have wines that cost three-hundred dollars in your apartment that you chug without second thought. The ring is generational, you act like old money, so tell me, was Hotch the sugar baby?”

Being drunk lets him say the most ridiculous things, lets him feel a confidence he only possesses when he’s absolutely certain that he’s got it right when he catches the unsub, when he’s explaining his fields of expertise, that sort of thing. It apparently even lets him accuse Hotch of being a sugar baby and he hopes beyond measure that you don’t tell the man he said that. It would never be forgotten, and he’d spend the rest of his career being reminded of it. But it also gets you to stare at him for a second before a giggle of all things falls from your lips. Forget the smiling, he’s made you giggle. 

“Apologies, it’s just, nobody knows him like you guys do, and I suppose like me as well, so the idea of him as my mothers’ sugar baby is certainly an idea.”

He groans, pressing the heels of his palms to his eyes, “Please do not tell him I said that, I think I might be banned from the BAU if you do.”

“Fear not, I’ll keep my lips sealed.”

“Thank you.”

“And for the record, yes, my mother is old money and he married into wealth. Of course he didn’t see a single penny of it from my mother, she refused to ever send a penny to him. Her fathers side of the family owns a firm over here, they were some of the first lawyers in San Francisco and they stayed in San Francisco. My grandmother though, she immigrated over here and when her children grew up they’d spend a year in San Francisco and a year in her home-country. It was doable, and it allowed her fathers’ family to put roots down in her country.”

You pause as the door slides open again for the drinks and appetizers, you thank her politely as Spencer perks up at the arrival of food, “This is wakame, a staple in my opinion, cucumber salad, and okonomiyaki, and we each have a little thing of cold soba.”

He, over the last few years, had picked up on the art of chopsticks, but in comparison with you it’s not great. You have practice with it, Spencer does too but not like you. His plate gets filled, but it’s not heavy food, it’s light, refreshing, and as you two make your way through the appetizers you continue. 

“Alright, so now my mother has spent half her life in the homeland, has connections everywhere across the world through her schooling because she’d spend a year with one friend group and a year with the other. She kept in contact with everyone, just like my aunts and uncles did with their other school friends. Now this results in my family opening up law firms everywhere, literally everywhere, and it certainly helps that we’ve been in business for over two-hundred years. But my mother just so happens to be the eldest daughter of her family, which happens to be the main line of inheritors of the firm as a whole.”

Not just rich. But rich. No wonder you could afford the view of your apartment, and it made him really, really, wonder what Hotch’s life looked like when he was still in the picture. Was he secret glitz and glam, pulling strings from behind the curtain, what was it like to be in a firm like the one your family runs? Old and established, roots in all sorts of places, wealth established in areas he wouldn’t even think of just for the sake of curating a lasting legacy. For a family in San Francisco to hold a title of some of the first means something he won’t understand beyond what it means on paper. 

“So what do you inherit?”

Your lips twitch, just a bit, “It means that if I stay here in San Francisco I’ll keep doing well for myself, but I’ll always have family dinner on Sunday. But it also means that if I want to I can pack my things up and leave San Francisco behind. Either option is a good option, and if more family firms pop up in my area then I’m in charge of them because I was there first. For some reason the family is big on the whole ‘I was here first’ thing, so whoever was there from the beginning is the one in charge. That’s how it works. For example my grandfather is the one running things here. My oldest uncle is his heir, my mother is his voice of reason, the entire reason why there are still dinners on Sundays.”

His eyes are practically sparkling, and if you were sober it’d freak you out. However, you’re drunk and he looks rather handsome in the warm lighting despite the way his eyes betray his drunken state and how he’s a tiny bit sweaty. He listens, he understands and beyond that he listens to the things between your sentences because he’s smart, he knows what to listen for. A tight-knit family that loves and cares but it’s a little too tight, a little bit on the edge of perfection that doesn’t allow much give to it. You can leave, they’ll let you, but they won’t stop reminding you. 

“They want you to continue with law, will you?”

“Wherever I go I’ll be with some form of law, I was practically spoon fed it from birth. You know, my-he used to put me to bed by reading his law textbooks. Bedtime law was our hour, exactly sixty minutes he’d sit there and read to me about things like ‘capitol offense’ or my rights. At least once a week we went through the amendment and what random ones stood for, he’d question me at breakfast in the morning without fail.”

The thought of Hotch reading law textbooks to put you to bed is an image that tugs at him and an image he desperately wishes he couldn’t see. Little raven locked you yawning while Hotch told you about gun rights isn’t something that should give him the urge to cry, but it kind of does. Hotch had been a good father to you then, he’d been kind, he’d been patient, he’d been loving. William had been that too all those years ago, he clears his throat after he swallows a bite of his food. 

“I, when I was little, my dad would go through all the sports with me, he’d change it up every week. Sometimes it was hockey, sometimes it was bowling, but every Saturday night it was a different sport. I wasn’t interested in sports, but it was one of the few things he could drag me into, especially because he knew it’d keep me quiet and retreat into sleep. That was how we spent Saturdays until he left.”

You eye him a bit as you sip your drink, and just like that the energy in the booth shifts again. Two peas in the pod you and he. Young geniuses with daddy issues and a little too much in common to ignore. You think of gravity, the pull that turns to revolving, a circle that moves so fast it roots you into place as you stare at what lies between the both of you. It should scare you, but it doesn’t, not this time. 

“He’s your boss.”

“I know.”

Pull. Force. Attraction. He’s five years older than you, the co-worker of your estranged father, and yet you’re spilling your guts to him in a private booth like you’ve never done before. It’s a bad idea, a terrible idea, but it’s an idea nonetheless. You know that with enough force, if something revolves fast enough, what gets inside stays inside, the only way out is to be violently flung. So not only a bad idea, but a dangerous one. 

You’re rational, you always have been, and so has Spencer. Two geniuses where control over oneself is the only way to live, taken like an oath branded in every decision made. Upon collision all of it flies out the window, there’s no rational way the chemicals in your brain mix and spark together, no indicator of why. There is though, but you can’t think of it, not like this. Not even when the food is brought does the tension snap, neither of you acting on it, nor acknowledging it, but it’s there. It’s there. 

Somehow, you both make it to the club, and because you’re you the line doesn’t apply to you, by extension it doesn’t apply to him either. The inside is loud, bathed in red with smoky lights strobing out to the crowd that’s on the floor. There’s girls in basically nothing with bottles in hand, cheering and laughing as the music blares. You though? You’re like a fish in water. 

You take him by the sleeve, making your way to the bar where you greet the bartender with two kisses on the cheek and your lips pulled into an easy smile while you shout something in her ear and hand her your purse. She steps away while you turn to Spencer, eyes already a little lidded as you beckon your head to the floor before you pull him down to yell in his ear, “I’m gonna go dance after a few shots, join me?”

He nods even though he’s never really danced at a club like this, especially not with a woman like you. Soon enough four shots of something pink is set down in front of you two, right along with two glasses of water and from there it’s a game of keep up for him. You take your shots and down your water, he nearly chokes at the speed, but he manages, and then you’re taking him to the floor. 

There’s too many people, the music too loud, but you begin to dance as you wade through the crowd. Hips starting to shimmy, your shoulders rolling as songs he’d heard on the radio to work start blaring with an edm twist thrown in. He tries, the alcohol helps, but you’re truly something else when you bend over and another girl starts humping you as you grind back on her, ass somehow in motion despite the jeans. Spencer is, undoubtedly, amazed by how you make it look easy. He is also mortified to an extent because you’re you and this was not what he was expecting. 

Somehow he’d thought you would go to the bar, stay on the outskirts, give a little movement every now and then. Not get down on your hands and throw your ass back or start letting a girl roam her hands over your body. But here you were, grinning as you let a girl touch over your chest, roam her hands down your hip and suckle a hickey onto your neck. Spencer stared because he didn’t know where else to look, and after you parted with the girl you came to him. 

You looped your arms around his neck, you weren’t grinning, you were just looking at him like the most satisfying puzzle you’d ever had was completed. Instinctively his hands came to your body, first your waist, and as you stepped closer to him, they went lower. He began to rock with your movements, letting the alcohol cloud further judgement when he grabbed a handful of your ass. In the next moment you turned around, pressing yourselves together as one of his hands came to your hip, the other holding your hand. 

You began to circle your hips whilst pressed to him, grinning as you felt him stiffen a bit beneath you despite the way his body kept moving. He felt good, like something new and exciting all at once in ways you didn’t expect as you moved. You didn’t shut your eyes, instead you looked at every face around you. You’d remember their faces, you knew you would, but you could also enjoy the good doctor while you were at it. Afterall, you had to sell it if you were going to find Natalie. 

Spencer’s hand trailed up, skimming your waist until it was creeping up, up, up, squeezing your tit lightly once he had found his target. You shivered under the touch, body moving a little wider, a little bolder as your nipple stiffened under the shirt. He pressed a kiss to your temple, then your jaw, and as you tilted your head your neck, your shoulder, but it was when he bit your neck did you know it was time to go home. 

He went willingly when you pulled him out of the place, drunkenly making your way back to your home as you clung to his arm, finding yourself in a talkative mood as you walked back to your place. Yet as soon as the door shut it was a different story. You found yourself backed up to the wall while he kissed you, hands roaming freely now that you weren’t under the public eye. Your fingers clumsily undid his buttons, and then his tie which made your pants drop off his waist. But he wasn’t the only one getting stripped down, he’d gotten your pants off, and your shirt was next. Luckily for you both a bra wasn’t involved. 

You dragged him to your bedroom as the stripping went on, until it was him in just his boxers while he parted your legs easily. The attention to your spread legs made you flush a bit, especially when he eased his way down to kiss at your inner thighs. He looked good like this, city light to illuminate the both of you, hair messed up and face flushed from alcohol. You like the sight of him between your thighs, especially when his mouth finally dips down where you need it to be. 

His mouth works you exactly how you need it, and he eats like there’s no greater purpose than to be between your legs. He remembers all the anatomical books he’d read, the sex organs, the seven spots of pressure that create pleasure in a woman's body. He’d memorized where they were, so when he slips two fingers into you it’s not difficult to press and rub against that little piece in you that has your fingers in a white-knuckle grip on the sheet despite the melanin in your skin. When he moans against your clit, having it in his mouth and his fingers drenched in your cunt you can’t help the way your body shoots itself into an orgasm. 

You moan because you can, there’s no neighbors to hear you fall apart as pleasure unfolds you for him. His hands don’t stop wandering over your body, occasionally thumbing your nipple, caressing your side, squeezing your thigh hard enough to leave the vague impressions of his fingers. He presses kisses to your body as he hauls himself up to slot himself between your legs, his own arousal poking at yours, but not quite there yet. He sucks hickies into your skin, a few here, a few there, and then the random bite mark that never fails to make you jolt as pleasure blooms from that particular pain. 

Finally he makes his way to your mouth, you can taste yourself on his tongue, but you don’t mind it. Not really, not when your fingers can roam over his back, fingernails tracing so lightly on his skin he can’t help but shiver. He draws himself up eventually so he can align himself with your entrance, the blunt head of his dick pressing down and you just know you’ll be ruined for any other man's cock after this. It’s not fair that Spencer has it all in your eyes. He’s smart, excellent job, and he has a dick that makes your mouth water. It’s always the nerds you remember, always the nerds that are packing nine or so inches with a girth that tells you you’ll need both hands to handle. 

“Is….is my dick okay? You’re staring at it rather intensely."

Your eyes flick up to him and wordlessly, you scoot your hips down a little bit, just enough to get the head in, “Spencer, I swear to god if you don’t put it in my right now I’m going to flip us over and do the job for you.”

His eyes widen, but then he grins, the one that tells you he’s just gotten a major confidence boost, and just like that you know you’re going to have the dicking down of your life. He holds your legs down as he eases his way in, the stretch everything you could have asked for, apparent in the way your thighs quiver as he sinks himself into you. Inch after inch vanishing into your straining folds as he seems to split you open, “Breathe for me, okay? Final stretch.”

You inhale deeply, and when you exhale Spencer pushes the rest of him inside with one thrust. There’s no choice but for you to open up to him except it nearly makes you shriek from the burst of stinging pleasure, the pressure in you nearly unbearable as his full length sits inside of you. You can feel every vein, ridge, every time he twitches or shifts. His thumb lazily circles your clit as you adjust to him, helping loosen you up a bit more, “You still with me?”

“Yes.” Somehow you manage to choke out an answer, it’s not strong by any means but you’d gotten it out, and that’s what matters. He smiles, leaning down to kiss your jaw, “You’re doing so good for me, want me to move now?”

“Please.”

“Good girl.”

His praise makes you shudder, but there’s no time for that when he drags part of himself out before pushing back in. You may be quiet when getting eaten out, when you’re in the midst of foreplay, but as soon as you get a dick stuck up your cunt? All that control over your words and embarrassing noises fly right out the window. With Spencer all you can do is take it, take the rhythm he sets and feel his hands on your body, touching you like he worships you. 

You’re not as drunk as you were before, but you’re tipsy enough to where the edges blur a bit and the pleasure only gets heightened by the lowered inhibitions you wear tonight. One of his hands comes to stroke your cheek, cradling it there and you lean into it, going so far as to kiss his palm whilst staring directly at him. Your hands move up then, pulling him down to where you can drag your fingernails all over his back, drawing thin red lines on his pale flesh. He whines when you scratch at the nape of his neck, or when you bite down on his shoulder. 

In a move that can only be described as bold you latch your lips to his wrist to suckle a hickey on his skin there. Truthfully, you didn’t know if it’d be one of his sensitive spots, you guessed it might be, and with the way he all but collapses onto you, whimpering with a fresh bruise right there, you know you’ve nearly shot him to the edge. Your fingers drag up his back, to his hair, tugging it until he looks at you with those big watery eyes of his, “Spence.”

He sighs at the call of his name, “Sweetheart.”

Intimate, it’s too intimate, but you both let it happen anyway because with two geniuses in the room all self-restraint goes out the door. He’s still moving in you, still chasing that high, you’re getting close to it, you know he is too, “Want it inside, please?”

He kisses you as an answer, hands gripping your hips so hard you know there’s going to be purple prints left behind. The orgasms, when they do arrive, are strong enough to make you two go boneless as pleasure clouds your visions for a second. Your pussy wrapped tight around him, milking him for all he has to offer and his dick twitching inside of you as he empties himself. For a moment you both lay there, nothing but bodies lax with post-orgasm bliss and the pleasant buzz of alcohol coursing through both of you. Then the spell must be broken by getting up to pee and shower because you’re both disgusting. 

There’s the spell of the night when the consequences of tomorrow haven’t arrived yet, quiet and lovely because for these spare hours it is just you and he and nothing else matters. For a few hours the world outside of your apartment doesn’t exist, it doesn’t matter, it’s you, him, the mountain of combined daddy issues and the urge to fuck each other stupid. Because geniuses make other geniuses stupid. 

For the night you two fall into bed with each other, acknowledging that gravity level draw that had you both in the club tonight, from a private booth in a pocket of Japan to you crying out for his dick in your unmade bed. Tomorrow will be a crucial day in order to find Natalie, you’ll be throwing everything you have into it, and so will Spencer, so will everybody. Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow-

___________

Tomorrow. Spencer scrambles when the alarm goes off, and so do you. He’d fallen asleep with you curled up on him and he’d woken up to your back pressed against him with his arm slung over your waist. He’s got thirty minutes to get to the hotel, get changed, and hopefully avoid the prying eyes of the team because he knows that you’ve marked him up good, and he did a number on you as well. Thankfully, he’s so very thankful, it’s fall which means long sleeves and high collars. 

You grumble when he stirs but he presses a kiss to your head and murmurs that he’ll see you in a few hours. You sigh, tugging him down for a proper kiss before waving him off, “Go, go, see you soon.”

Then just like that you drop back to sleep, he snorts at the sight before pulling on his clothes from the night before, but not just his clothes, the clubbing clothes. He’d done it absentmindedly, and then he does his walk of shame back to the hotel room, he’d been put up with Morgan, but Spencer hadn’t come back during the night. Unfortunately for Spencer there’s really not enough time to get in the shower or bathroom to change properly, it’s more a mad scramble of other things. 

Which means when he peels his shirt off Derek Morgan gets the full view of his back and how you’ve borderline claimed him via fingernail scratches. He freezes when Morgan whistles, a low sound that’s prideful, letting him know he’s absolutely been caught, “I was wondering where you were at last night, didn’t realize you were having a night, I thought you were going to visit little Hotchner?”

This is territory that Spencer absolutely cannot fall into, but there’s also no way in hell that he’s going to be able to hide this from him, not with Garcia on the other end that can trace him to where he’d spent the night, “Oh, I did see her, I talked with her a little bit and found out that Natalie and her went clubbing a few days ago. She took me to the club that they were at, and I uh, I got distracted at the end.”

Morgan raises his brow, “Distracted, by whom?”

“Oh, you know, some girl, don’t remember her name or anything like that. Did you know the statistics of a relationship happening after a one night stand are actually higher than people would think? An average median of 28% of one-night stands lead to successful relationships, which is really interesting because-”

“Spencer.”

His mouth clicks shut as he finishes tugging his pants on, “Yeah?”

He hates how his voice goes quiet, how meek he sounds because it’s not hard to put the pieces together, “If I call Garcia and ask her where you were last night is she going to tell me you were at Hotch’s daughters’ apartment?”

Spencer sighs, shoulders slumping, “I didn’t plan on it.”

Morgan groans, running his hands down his face, “Oh no you are into her. I knew it, I knew it, I knew it, but I didn’t think you two would jump each other like that! What happened last night?”

Now it’s Spencer’s turn to groan as he speed brushes his teeth, quickly spitting it out before rising his mouth, “I went over intending to ask her about the case, about any personal details she might have omitted because she might not have wanted to say something due to Hotch being there. I mean, we all saw how lunch went down yesterday. I’ve never seen two people want to be there with each other so badly and be so miserable about it. I came over, she poured wine, we ended up at the club, at a restaurant, and then we got super drunk and came home, then we fucked each other, and now I’m never going to be able to look Hotch in the eye.”

“Did you at least find out anything from the club?”

Spencer shakes his head, frowning, “I didn’t find anything, but she did.”

He grabs his bag, following Morgan out the door, “I know she was there to scan the area, see if there were any familiar faces in the crowd that might’ve been there when she went with Natalie. Her memory, she’s got hyperthymesia meaning she can recall just about every single detail of every day of her life perfectly. You can ask her what she was doing February 7, 1994 and she can tell you what she did. She can give you faces, what people said to her, what she ate and how she felt that day. She can look back at her memories and see what’s there, review it like footage but it’s her memory.”

“That’s more detailed than your eidetic memory.”

He smiles at the comment, “I know, I think it’s fascinating though. Mine isn’t even scientifically proven despite my existence and hers is rare enough that there’s three other people who have been diagnosed with it.”

“Meaning she’s basically a walking recorder. But specifically through her eyes.”

“Exactly, her mind is incredible, she’s like the ultimate witness.”

The paused at the elevator, not yet going down as Morgan turned to look at Spencer, an unfamiliar glint in his eye, “Last night wasn’t a one time thing, was it?”

Spencer pauses, he remembers the way he’d touched on you last night, the way you’d tugged him close as if he might just up and leave you after the act was done. He knows what it’s like, he knows what you need, and in turn you know what he needs, “I don’t think so. Will you, are you going to tell Hotch?”

“Nah man, I’m not about to be the postman of your murder.”

Reassurance had always been Morgan’s strong suit. 

___________

Emily gives him a look once he appears, “I heard you didn’t come back last night.”

Spencer shrugs, “Had a night.”

Morgan grins, because he might not be able to tease Spencer on who he slept with, but he can tease him over the fact that it happened, “Our doctor over here certainly did have a night. Boy came in running, I’ve never seen so much damage done by fingernails and teeth.”

Their eyebrows shot up as Spencer’s face reddened, “It wasn’t that bad.”

“Oh yeah? Show them your wrist, pretty boy.”

“Derek.”

He laughed, thumping Spencer on the back as the team moved out, “Don’t worry, we’re happy for you.”

Hotch wouldn’t be when he found out who was on the receiving end of Spencer’s night out, but what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. They stop for coffee along the way, and an hour into getting to their room you roll up. This time you’re fully covered but nobody thinks twice about it because of the weather outside. You glance at Spencer, a silent confirmation to not say a single word about the night prior. Hotch glances at you, taking note of the circles hidden underneath the concealer and the way you’re sitting a bit tensely, “Did you sleep alright?”

Spencer locks his gaze in on Morgan, who busies himself with his files as you nod, “Yes, I was just out late though. I went to the club Natalie and I went to two days before she vanished to see if I could spot a familiar face. I found two people who were within a twenty foot proximity that were also in the same area when Natalie and I were there.”

“Do you have names?”

“Give me a second.”

You go still, eyes glazing over for a second as you pick a memory to review, and after a few minutes you nod, “Brian Fishner and Jacob Teems. Brian’s a psych major, Jacob is classical art. Brian’s a senior, Jacob’s a sophomore. Brian’s about 6’2, 180-185 pounds, he’s into streetwear. Jacob’s around 5’9, 130-135 pounds, he’s creative with his clothes.”

The names get written down as Morgan flips his phone open, “Hey babygirl, we’ve got two names I need you to look into, you ready? Brian Fishner and Jacob Teems. Alright, thank you sugar.”

He snaps the phone shut, “Alright, now where would they be?”

You tilt your head, “Brian’s probably at home, Jacob could be anywhere. Brian was still at the club when I left, Jacob left earlier. Don’t ask me their schedules or where their addresses are, I don’t keep tabs on everyone.”

“Noted, how do we want to do this?”

Hotch pursed his lips, “We split into two teams, one will go to Brian’s apartment, the other will find Jacob and pull him in for a conversation. Natalie’s parents are giving a statement later today, around two PM. If we’re following the unsubs patterns then today is Natalie’s last day, we need to find her by tonight.”

You try not to flinch at his words, it’s just the truth, but nonetheless it hurts to hear. You’d held yourself together through the ordeal, but knowing that you’re so, so close to losing one of your best friends is something you didn’t think you’d be dealing with at twenty-two. All you want is to feel her arm pressed against yours and her infectious laughter as you and her hang out in your apartment. Shopping, hair, nails, you and her had been two peas in a pod. 

You’d met Natalie in Freshman year in line for a party, you’d both decided to go out by yourselves, and along the way had met each other, and other people too. Three times of running into each other at the club you’d both exchanged numbers and the rest was history. She was the kind of friend that you knew with absolute certainty that she’d be a bridesmaid and contender for maid of honor. Now she was somewhere out there, and if dawn broke the next morning without her you knew you’d wake up to her corpse on campus. 

With this in mind, you step outside to make a call, phone already pulled up as you reach for your other friend, Rumi, who you met at the club with Natalie in Freshman year. He picks up on the second call, breathless, “Sorry I was in class, what’s going on? Is there an update?”

For the first time in years your breathing goes a bit shaky, “It’s, it doesn’t look good right now. I went back to the club to see if there was anybody familiar, there was, and we’re looking into them now. But it’s just, today's the deadline.”

“The deadline?”

“According to the FBI the unsub has a pattern, every fourth day the corpse shows up on campus. But during those three days the victim is alive. But come nightfall they’re killed. We have less than twelve hours to find this guy.”

“Oh my god. That’s, how are you holding up?”

“I think I’m going insane, just a little bit.”

“Want me to come get you?”

“No, no, I need to help with this investigation. It’ll increase the chances of us finding Nattie if I’m a present consultant.”

“I forgot, your dad is on the team too, isn’t he?”

“He is.”

“How is it?”

“Weird, god it’s weird. He’s got wrinkles in his face, there's grey hair, if I stand in front of him with my heels I can look him in the eye instead of looking up. It’s like, I catch myself doing things that he does too, and I know we don’t look very much alike but he’ll make a face and it’s my face too, it’s weird. Really weird.”

“I can’t imagine, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be, just, would you do me a favor?”

“Of course.”

“Get the friend group together, I’ll come by later, I’ll give a rundown of what goes down today and deliver the verdict after, okay?”

“I can do that, what time were you thinking?”

“Let’s do six, that sounds good?”

“Perfect, I’ll see you at six, my place or yours?”

“We can do mine, you have a spare key.”

“Great because mine is a disaster.”

You chat with him for a few more minutes before you call your mother, she takes a few rings to answer, but eventually she does, “Hi baby, you doing okay?”

Her voice makes you want to cry, all you want is to see your mom, to hug her and breathe her scent in, but you’re in college, you’ve been in college, you’re grown. Supposedly, “Hi Ma, I-I really want to see you.”

“We can do that, how about tonight?”

“Can we do tomorrow? I’m, if today doesn’t go right then I’ll be with my friends.”

You can practically see the way her face morphs on the other end, “Of course, how about we grab lunch tomorrow, noon?”

“Yes, yes, please. I-did you know Dad was going to be here?”

She’s silent on the other end, just for a second and it’s enough to tell you that yes, she knew, “Have you told my brothers their dad is in town?”

“No. Not yet.”

You shift uneasily, “Will you tell them?”

She sighs, “I don’t know, they were, they were so young when he left. They don’t remember things like you do.”

“Mama nobody remembers things like I do. You need to ask them if they want to meet him, that’s their choice.”

“I know it is but Aaron, he’s-he’s him. God there’s so much of him I can’t think straight. Not when it comes to your dad.”

You know it too, you know how your parents' marriage panned out from when you were a baby to now, you remember the details, you remember the words. You’d watched them love each other and then you’d watched them hate each other. They’d loved each other, deeply, enough to have three children together within three years of one another. There was going to be a wedding, and you knew, you knew like you knew your measurements that if the BAU hadn’t called your mother would have met him at the altar. 

“You really think I should ask them?”

“Yes. They’re old enough to make these kinds of choices for themselves. They’re twenty Mama, they’ll be mad if you don’t offer the chance to them.”

“Will you tell them?”

“Mama.”

“Sorry, sorry, I know it’s not your job to be your father.”

You love your mother, she’s friend and guardian rolled in one and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Despite her intelligence, despite her confidence, her everything, she never could figure out how to deal with Hotch. Those first few years after Hotch left, really left, your mother was a wreck. She’d never admit that she was, she wouldn’t acknowledge those years really. If you thought it was bad when you were a kid it was downright horrendous as a teenager. 

She’d realized upon your second graduation, the one from law school when you were seventeen, that she spiraled hard. Your brothers were fourteen, just starting high school, and you were working your first year of the firm. At some point you’d moved out to an apartment and taken your brothers with you, it was after your stepfather divorced from your mother and took what he could with your stepsiblings. He did what he could for you and your full brothers but with mouths to feed on his side he couldn’t fully take care of you all. 

Eventually she’d gotten better and you could finally breathe again. You’d been the twins’ primary caretaker, mother and older sister forced to be one person. It’d been an interesting time to say the least. The three of you grew closer than ever, but it also saw the three of you grow up way too much without the safety net you all needed. It was without contest the absolute lowest point of your life. 

“Tell them within the hour, we’re going to lunch together, okay?”

She sniffles, it makes your heart ache because that’s your mother, the strongest woman you know, and your father has made her cry again despite their lack of interaction, “Is he with you now? Aaron?”

“We’re in the same building, why?”

“Let me talk to him.”

“Mama it is not the time for this, Natalie is missing and we cannot be distracted right now.”

“Baby please, just five minutes, I need five minutes.”

“Lunch. You’ll have a whole lunch later, you’ll have it tomorrow. Now Mama I have to go. If we can’t find Nattie by sundown she’s going to turn up tomorrow morning as one of those god-awful corpse statues. I-I can’t see her like that, I can’t. So can we please put a pause on our feelings until we know Natalie is safe? Look, if by sundown we’ve found her I’ll call you back, I’ll put him on for you, and you can talk to him all night long. But not right now. Please?”

She’s silent for a long moment on the other end and fuck how you want to cry. Unbidden, your eyes start to tear up, you hate fighting with your mother. You argue with people for a living but you can’t tell your mother no without feeling like you’re getting the shit kicked out of you. Finally, you hear her breathe, “You’re right, you’re right, I’m sorry. I’ll see you at lunch tomorrow, I’ll ask the boys, they might call you later. I’ll send you an address.”

Your head tips back, eyes shutting in relief, “Thank you Mama, and if they do call I’m available after eleven, I can’t promise I’ll be in the right state to pick up the phone.”

“I’ll let them know, it’s okay, I promise it’s okay.”

“I miss her Mama, I miss her so much.”

“I know you do, but you’ll see her soon.”

You will see her soon, she just might not be alive. With a new blanket of misery cloaking your being you make your way back to the room where you plop down, not bothering to hide your displeasure. Hotch arches a brow at you, “Is everything okay?”

He doesn’t flinch when you look at him, mouth downturned even as you speak, “Everything’s perfect, and heads up, Mama’s coming to lunch tomorrow, she might bring the twins.”

“Are you serious?”

“She said she’d text where we’re going to meet.”

“Can she still not let anybody pick where to eat when going out?”

“What do you think?”

Hotch grunts in acknowledgement, lip curled in mild disgust as he waves his hand, “Text the address to me later, I’ll be there. You said the twins might come?”

You shrug, “They might, Mama hasn’t told them you’re here.”

“She hasn’t?”

“They have like max three memories of you, they were two when you left. Mama was on the verge of making me play messenger and delivering the news to them that their dad who they haven’t seen in a decade is in the city. But can we please focus? My friend is dead as soon as that sun dips below the horizon.”

Spencer clears his throat, “Garcia’s on line one.”

Hotch reaches over, and then her voice is there, “I, the faithful messenger you all adore, have come with some information, but not a lot. Brian Fishner checks out, he had an alibi and was at the club well into three am, past the time of Natalie vanishing. Jacob Teems however has no alibi, he’s not seen anywhere and the contacts in his phone were all nowhere near to him or with him.”

There’s a pause, and then, “Wait is femme Hotchner in the room with us?”

Hotch tilts his head from you to the call, and you clear your throat, “Are you Garcia?”

“Oh my god you’re real, you’re so real. I didn’t believe them at first, you’re really Hotch’s flesh and blood?”

“Unfortunately.”

She laughs, Hotch does not, you decide you like Garcia, “Well, well, I expect photos and comparisons and nobody is getting out of it. You hear me?”

“I do.”

Then you throw yourself into the case, head tilting back as you recall the events from the last time you saw Natalie. Spencer eyes you carefully, clearly you’re on edge, the looming loss of Natalie creeping over you faster than you can process. You’ve worked really, really hard on the case. Tonight will be difficult for you, no matter what it is there’s no getting around the fact that some part of you will break. They’re just waiting for the shoe to drop. But in the meanwhile you sharpen your focus, filtering, sorting, your memory and intellect are a dangerous combo in a situation like this. 

Spencer nudges your thigh, “What’s Natalie’s favorite coffee shop?”

You glance at him, “She liked going to Chai House when she wasn’t on campus, but on campus she preferred going to Baker and Commons. Thursdays were reserved for coffee study sessions.”

“It’s Thursday, what time did she usually go?”

“Around two, she’d stay until five.”

Hotch nods at him, “Go to the one she frequented outside of campus, Morgan and Emily can set up shop in the one on campus. Don’t stay longer than three-thirty, we’re getting close but not close enough.”

It was around eleven when you got a new phone call, one from Katalina, you answered her easily, stepping outside when you did, “What’s up?”

“Rumi said to gather at your apartment, at six, he said it wasn’t looking good. I’m with Veronica right now, we just, what’s going on?”

You swallow because it’s the one thing you can do, “We’re trying to narrow down who it is. You know that.”

“I know, but seriously, this is-how bad is it? Is Nat coming home or not?”

Your eyes shut, “I don’t know. It’s, I think we need to prepare for the worst.”

She’s silent for a moment, “You don’t think she’s coming home.”

“I don’t think I know anything right now.”

“You’re literally a genius, your LSAT scores match your IQ, you’re on degree number four and you’re twenty-two. How can you not know what’s going on? Why can’t you find her? What’s wrong?”

“Katalina I’m trying over here, I’m pouring everything I have into finding Natalie. You’re frustrated? How do you think I feel?”

“I think you’re sitting on your ass.”

“Excuse me?”

“Cameron was at the club last night, so were you. What could you possibly need to find while grinding against the FBI agent closest to you in age?”

You struggle to get your thoughts in order, just for a second, “Katalina I was blending in, we both were. Natalie and I were at the club two days before she vanished. I saw two people there who were also in a twenty-foot proximity to us that night there again. You think I went to the club because I thought I could use some fun? Like I just want to forget that somewhere out there our friend is getting fucking murdered?”

“I think you want to forget a lot of things, doesn’t surprise me you know, with your dad being there and all. Bet you feel like you’re five again, huh? Daddy’s little girl who sits on his lap and reads her big girl books. Are you gonna fall apart when he inevitably leaves again?”

You try telling yourself it’s grief, it’s justified anger and she’s just saying things because she’s upset, but you’re tired of being the level headed one. You’re so sick of being the voice of reason, the one who drives people home from the club, the one making sure people are hydrated, “Fuck you.”

“What?”

The disbelief in her voice satisfies something in you, only fueling the ever 

growing pit of rage that’s been slowly starting to bubble in your stomach, “You heard me Katty. Fuck. You. If one of us ever goes missing I better see you sitting front row working the case, I know I’ll be there. But where the hell are you going to be? Because it’s been three days since Natalie went missing, and the most I’ve heard from you is about how you have to paint a banner for your sorority. Color theory got your tongue?”

Without waiting for a reply you end the call and step back into the room, Morgan raises his brows at you, “Sounded pretty serious out there. You ever say fuck before?”

Your cheeks warm, “Apologies. I let my feelings get the better of me.”

“No, no, I’m sure whatever you’ve said was warranted.”

That makes your face sour, “She’s always been great about pointing out everyone else's weak points but when it comes to her own self she can’t take the criticism. At least I know I’m a frigid bitch.”

Hotch clears his throat, “Language.”

You roll your eyes, going boneless in your chair as your brows furrow, “Wait, did Katalina have an alibi for when Natalie went missing?”

Emily pauses her reading to look up at you, “Are you putting your friend as a suspect?”

“Katalina was with us that night at the club. She left before us, and said she was going home with a guy. But Katalina never mentioned anything about him the next day, which is odd, since she always recounts her one-night stands in detail. She’s been more focused on her sorority than Natalie, and now she calls me with the intention of throwing me off.”

Hotch sighs, “Your anger at your friend isn’t enough to warrant her as a potential suspect. Although the information is convenient, are you absolutely sure that you want to throw her under the bus like that?”

You glance at him, “Take this out of personal perspective. Does she look like a potential unsub?”

“With that information, yes, but that is besides the point. You and her get in a fight and you accuse her of kidnapping a mutual friend? Did she even have connections to the other girls on campus?”

“Sorority life, all the other girls were part of sororities.”

Hotch hesitates, taking a look around the rest of the team, “I’m not promising anything, but I’ll have Garcia look into her.”

“Thank you.”

“What did she say to you that warranted such a strong reaction? Clearly she got under your skin.”

They all very pointedly try to make it look like they aren’t listening to a damn word when you purse your lips, “It was about you.”

“Me?”

“She asked what I was going to do when you inevitably leave again. There was other stuff, but that was the main question.”

You hold your hand up when he opens his mouth, body shutting off away from him, “Don’t answer her question yet. You can tell me later, whatever you decide can’t possibly do more damage than what came around the first time.”

He relents, backing down and away after a moment where it looks like he might leap, “Alright. Tomorrow, at lunch, we’ll discuss it with your mother.”

“Okay.”

You’re too strung out to argue against anything at the moment. Natalie is almost on the cusp of being gone completely, Katalina is picking fights with you, and there’s almost an unsub, almost a name to be held accountable. But it’s not enough. Time slips past you as you review the names of everyone interviewed. Sculpture students, professors, her friends, you included. 

It’s weird to see your profile there, your student ID and then right beside it your name, Hotchner written down just as it always is but it still feels wrong. You don’t know why you kept the name, your mother had offered to change it, but you refused. Now it’s on a case file for your friend, “When will you bring her in for an interview?”

“As soon as we can, what else could make Katalina the unsub?”

You shut your eyes, retreating into the space of memory for a second before you look at your father, “Are you sure it’s just one unsub?”

The question makes the room go still as Hotch tilts his head at you, “Go on.”

You glance at the bodies pinned up on the wall, “These were sorority girls, this one, Jennifer Thompson, was the secretary for her sorority, Delta Zeta. Maria Ramirez was chair of Philanthropy, Rosey Blank was vice-president of Delta-Sigma. Natalie was treasurer for Pi Beta Phi. All of them held a position of power in their sorority. Whoever is targeting them is making a cabinet of corpses. Meaning the next victim is going to be someone of importance to a sorority, you’re looking at the President or recruitment officer since the other four slots have been filled.”

The realization makes your body go taut as you take it in, “A sorority girl who ran for a position of importance but didn’t make it. Katalina ran for recruitment officer and lost to Brianna DeMarcos. Katalina’s made banners for her sorority for the past four years, she’s been the one putting things together, making things pretty. Didn’t we say the unsub was an underappreciated artist?”

“But who's kidnapping the girls and murdering them? I doubt Katalina is doing all of that.”

“Every woman with sex appeal knows that all you have to do is find the guy who nobody pays attention to for your dirty work. You bat your eyes, tease him, give him the illusion you need him, that you’ll repay him however he likes, as long as he does this favor for you. You used to tell me that in a duo who murders there’s always a dominant and submissive partner. Katalina is the dominant partner, the guy is the submissive and she’s using him to kill the girls. She picks them out, she lures them in because she’s a sister, she’s welcoming, friendly, nobody thinks twice about a sister asking them for help or joining up. Katalina’s a chemistry major, she’s got access to chemicals that make easy date-rape drugs or substances that impair judgement, making the victim pliant, maybe a bit disoriented. Easy to drag off.”

You tap the first pose, “She’s forcing them into demeaning positions because she feels insulted. The higher the position of power the more degrading the pose becomes. She’s….coming to my apartment tonight.”

Your body turns to look at Hotch, “I’m president of Phi Alpha Delta. Just like you were.”

“You’re a target then.”

“She called me to throw me off my game. She used the points that she knew would hurt me.”

“So you’ll slip up, it can be blamed on the heat of the moment but it adds up too well, she knew you’d figure it out eventually.”

“Because I’m too close to the case, I told her we were close to figuring it out. She asked how I couldn’t know who it was, she asked how I couldn’t figure it out. She didn’t ask for Natalie’s sake.”

“She asked because she’s upset you haven’t figured it out yet.”

“She’s an underappreciated artist.”

“You’re the president, you’re the one with all the recognition, she’s upset about it. She wants you to recognize her.”

“Because I’m the end goal.”

Hotch’s frown deepens, “Because you’ve been a target this entire time. You’ve been the target.”

You nod once, like it's a fact, “How do you want to do this then? We rush her then she might have her guy go ahead and kill Natalie, and this is assuming she’s still alive. We don’t rush her and she might kill Natalie herself.”

“It’ll look suspicious if we call her to the station, she might not even show up if we do, especially if it becomes apparent we know.”

“So we act like nothing is wrong?”

“Exactly, you’re going to go home and grieve with your friends, we’re going to wait outside and as soon as you’re in we’re going to get her.”

“What about Natalie?”

“Does Katalina have an apartment?”

“No, she lives in the sorority house. If Natalie’s being held anywhere it’s the submissive partner's place.”

“She would’ve seeked a guy out with his expertise in human anatomy and sculpting.”

“So a guy who studies the human body but loves art. He doesn’t go to Berkeley if that’s the case, he probably goes to UCSF, they’re nationally ranked for the med programs. But he probably does sculpting or art here in Berkeley. We have a program, Berkeley Art Studio, it offers various classes and is open to the public so anybody can join a class. Katalina signs up for sculpting, she finds a guy perfect for her needs, she might’ve even made him into what she needed in order to get her way. It’s just a bonus that he’s from a different university.”

Hotch turns to Morgan, “Get Garcia on the line.”

A few moments later her voice is there, “What can I do for you people way beyond the indignity of a frat party?”

“Garcia, I need you to access the list of people who took a sculpting class through Berkeley Art Studio, narrow it down to students, and from there pre-med students in UCSF.”

“Specific concentration?”

“Surgery.”

“I’ll get back to you with what I can.”

“Thank you.”

Hotch turns back to you, “Do you have a gun?”

You give him a look, “Of course I do, who do you take me for? I have a revolver in my purse.”

“Good, you might have to use it tonight.”

“Fantastic, just what I wanted to hear.”

“You’re inviting the unsub into your apartment, I’m not taking any risks.”

“Do I get to arrest her?”

“You don’t have that power despite being a prosecutor.”

“Can I tell her she’s going to be arrested?”

“Fine.”

Your nerves despite being raised smooth themselves over. You know what’ll happen tonight, you know what might come, “What do we do if things don’t go according to plan?”

“We adapt.”

“Reassuring.”

He sighs, “You’ll be surrounded by law enforcement as soon as the party begins. We’re a call away and we’ll also send you in with an earpiece so we can listen in on the conversation. If things start going south then we’ll be ready.”

You eye him, “Are you also going to be there?”

“I will be.”

Marginally, you relax. It aggravates you that knowing he’ll be there is a comfort, but knowing what’s going to go down tonight is different. You might have to shoot somebody, you’re going to face Katalina, cry over Natalie and watch as she cries over her too despite knowing the truth. Nobody else knows and you intend to keep it that way if you’re going to pull this off. The day moves on, fast and slow and then there’s the coffee shop, that just gets turned into a discussion of the plan. 

An hour before the deadline you stand, brushing your clothes off from invisible dust as you grab your things, “I need to go prepare for people tonight.”

Before Hotch can speak you cut him off, “And before you make me recite the plan or what I need to do I’ve had these procedures memorized since I was three.”

He relents with a tip of his head, “Alright, but at the first sign of something suspicious you tell us, that’s an order, understand?”

“I do. I’ll see you later.”

You step away from the building, from the safety net that you’ve subconsciously reattached to Hotch. You think of calling your mother again, maybe one of your brothers. Tell them what’s happening, that no matter what tonight entails you’re always thinking of them. You think of Spencer, the way his ankle had tangled with yours under the table and he brought you your preferred order from the coffee shop without asking. He could be something, he could be nothing. You think of your father, stoic in his ways, serious like he hadn’t been when you were a kid, and how you want him to tell you everything will be alright again. 

Hotch doesn’t do well with promises though, no Hotchner does. There’s no guarantee about how tonight will fare. If Natalie will be found alive, if you’ll walk away without blood stained hands. You don’t know, nobody knows, but what matters is that you’ve found an unsub, and you’re inviting her in tonight. 

____________

Katalina finds you ten minutes into your walk home, her face deceptively apologetic as you shift uneasily, “Kat?”

“I’m sorry, about earlier. I wasn’t thinking right and it was wrong of me to say.”

Pretend like nothing’s amiss. That’s a rule, and one you intend to follow through. Your face softens, “I know it’s difficult, she’s our friend.”

Relief bleeds through her body language, you doubt it’s because you’ve forgiven her, “I know, it’s just, we haven’t seen much of you at all these past few days and then you go out last night with that guy looking like you’re having the time of your life. It was jarring to see that.”

You raise your brow at her, “I thought Cameron saw us, were you there too?”

“No, but he sent a video.”

“Mm, I see.”

“Did you sleep with him? The agent?”

“I did.”

“That didn’t distract you from the case?”

You shake your head, allowing a little smile to grace your face, “I’d say it helped us focus if I’m honest.”

“What’s his name?”

“Spencer, he’s fun.”

“He looked fun, looked at you like he wanted to devour you.”

“Well, he kinda did.”

She gasps, but there’s laughter in her voice and if you didn’t know what you do now it would feel like any other day after class or work. The mood sobers quickly though when she nudges your side, “What are you planning for tonight?”

You resist the urge to dock her in the face and demand what she has planned for tonight. If she’ll laugh when Natalie gets hacked to pieces, if she’ll gasp in awe when the statue is complete. 

“I was going to make us something easy, something comforting. You want to help?”

“If you’ll let me.”

“For Natalie, I’ll make an exception. Let’s go get groceries.”

“I’ll pay for them then since you’ll be doing the cooking.”

For the most part it’s normal, you’re just two girls doing some grocery shopping in the most expensive luxury grocery store that sits between campus and your apartment. You get to shop there because you have money in your pockets, lots of money, and because you used to take Natalie there for a sweet treat every now and then. She had loved the baklava, and considering the fact that you aren’t going to bake that, you buy a sheet of it because you can. 

It’s five when you get to your apartment, and once the key unlocks you feel the heavy weight of knowing it’s too late. The sky is darkening outside, there’s maybe thirty minutes left of daylight before darkness takes over completely. You and Katalina both know there’s not even an hour left for Natalie, and you just hope that your father has figured out where she’s being held. 

Nonetheless you begin to cook, a dance you find comfort in. You know exactly what’s in what, when to add things, how to cook other ingredients for maximum flavor profile. Guests will be arriving soon, you know some will be in tears, others will keep themselves strong. You get a text from Hotch once, a simple we’re in the area and your heart wants to hammer but you keep calm. 

You pause your cooking when the text comes through as you turn to Katalina, “Do you mind watching the stove while I pee?”

“Of course not, you go.”

Quietly you slip away to the kitchen so you can text him back, “Katalina is in here with me, guests are due to arrive in a few minutes.”

There’s a ping a few seconds later, Spencer this time, “Your dad looks ready to crawl out of his skin.”

You can’t imagine what that might look like to them, what they might be witnessing from their fearless leader. You finish up your business before coming back to the kitchen, Cameron is there now. Red hair and pale skin, his lip trembles when he sees you, “Is it true?”

Cameron is innocent, you know it like you know your memory. He reminds you of one of your younger twin boys, a bit of naive innocence clinging to him despite everything, “It’s true.”

“Oh. Oh.”

You grab a tissue wordlessly when the tears start to spill over, “I-I didn’t think it’d be true.”

“It’s alright, I didn’t want to believe it either.”

He hugs you, face pressed to the crook of his neck as he falls apart for a few 

minutes. You let him because you’re falling apart a little bit too, you don’t have confirmation on Natalie, you don’t have confirmation on everything. To top it off the offender is standing three feet away from you cooking on your stove acting like she feels remorse for what’s going on. You have to pull away first, smoothing some of his hair back as you wipe the tears away with a tissue, “I need you to be strong for a little bit longer, can you do that?”

Cameron nods, although he’s still sniffling, “I can do that, but can I ask why you were at the club yesterday?”

You’d slipped away to the bathroom to put your earpiece in, so now you know that whatever you say they can hear, “I was undercover for a little bit, I needed to scope out the club to see if there was anybody familiar standing too close.”

“You didn’t find anybody there?”

“I didn’t, but we think we’ve found the guy responsible for all of this. I’ll tell you all more when everyone sits down, I want everyone to know.”

“Okay.”

Veronica comes next, so does Nikolas, followed up by Julian, Priyani, Abdul, and lastly, Lucca. They come in with varying states of misery, but the company helps. Your friends can lean on each other while you keep cooking, losing yourself to the rhythm of stirring, flipping, the warmth of the stove decreasing the stiffness in your fingers. Katalina pours wine for people beside you while a few others set the table. There’s not much said, not much anybody can say if they’re honest. 

A few hours of this, of pretending and mourning and hoping that Natalie is found before the sunbreaks. You wait for the moment that they burst through to declare Katalina the unsub, putting her under arrest as the hunt for Natalie takes a few steps forward. You hope you won’t have to put a gun to her temple. She might be the one behind the murders, the reason why Hotch is inexplicably back in your life, the reason why Natalie isn’t sitting at your table anymore. But yesterday she was a friend, a good one too. Yesterday she had been Katty to you, the girl you went to parties with and took photos of. 

Tonight she’s the bitch with an end goal to murder you. Part of you itches to reach for the gun, to let it go straight through her head even without a confession. The other part wants to scream and cry why in her face, demand answers and have her plead it was a misunderstanding even when it isn’t. The worst part is; You don’t know which option you’ll be forced to take, it could be any of them depending on circumstance. Now you wait for the FBI to burst in, to traumatize your friends and leave you to pick up the pieces.

Dinner finishes and moves to the living room for baklava and tea, nobody says a word, nobody speaks, it’s like there’s a countdown hanging above your heads. The silence isn’t comforting for you, and when you look up, Katalina is staring directly at you, “So what information do you have?”

Go time. You know your father will be moving now, you just have to time it right, “We know the unsub is likely a white male in his early twenties. Quiet, unassuming, he’s taken a class at Berkeley Art Studio in the past six months. He goes to school at UCSF for surgery, but he’s pre-med. Insecure, he’s likely a virgin. You could even say this guy is submissive, but he’s very, very intelligent. He might not be particularly handsome, but enough to where his ugliness isn’t noticed, but right there on the side where he’s never someone’s first pick.”

Katalina shifts as you reach into the cushion to draw your revolver out, nobody sees, you’re too careful for that, “And more importantly, he’s not working alone. Because when two killers get together there’s always one focal dynamic; A dominant, and a submissive. The dominant one in this case is a woman, a sister, one who’s clearly upset by the power system in place. She feels unappreciated, like her art hasn’t been recognized, or better yet, because art is a representation of oneself, she feels unrecognized, unappreciated. She’s a narcissist, a psychopath, she doesn’t feel empathy, she doesn’t feel remorse. She’s sitting in this room.”

The doors burst open and you try not to flinch when your fathers voice rings in your ears, “Katalina McKinny you’re under arrest for the murders of Jennifer Thompson, Maria Ramirez, and Rosey Blank.”

She’s on her feet in an instant, “This isn’t right, I haven’t done anything!”

You stand, something cool, something dangerous on your face as you circle around her, your father stepping forward and god you look so much like him. Revolver in hand and a deceptive calm over your face, “Yes you have, you have. You watched your partner take those girls apart and you drew up the poses you wanted to put those girls in. The higher their position the more degrading the pose would be. You couldn’t stand it, could you? All that work, banner after banner, everything you’ve ever created, all for it to get discarded in the end. How long have you been planning my murder Katalina?”

She’s got her hands up but her eyes won’t leave you, she grits her teeth, silently analyzing her options, “Where’s Natalie? Where have you stored her?”

For a moment there’s nothing, then she shuts her eyes and tilts her head up towards your ceiling, “Anna Head Alumnae Hall. Third floor, second door on the right from the west stairs.”

“Is she alive?”

“No.”

Hotch moves, dragging her wrists into cuffs as she’s hauled out of the building, but when you start to head out Spencer steps in front of you, hands gripping your arms, “Let us go get her. Not you. Please.”

You frown at him, “Spencer-”

“Please. You’re not part of the BAU officially, you don’t need to see her body.”

“I do, I’ve worked this case right there with you and I need to see it finished.”

“I know but please, just, you’ve had a night. You can see tomorrow.”

Your brow arches, “I want updates tonight and I get to see tomorrow.”

“Deal, thank you, just please, go be with your friends.”

He leaves, you lock the door behind you and in a display of a rare lapse in control, you slide down the front of it until you’re on the floor. Natalie is dead, Katalina confessed her murder, she confessed what she had done. You’ve cracked the case, you’ve followed your fathers’ footsteps. Katalina will be put behind bars, the perfect future she’d envisioned for herself gone in the blink of an eye. For a second you just sit there, head thumping against the door when you tilt it back. 

You’re exhausted, you hadn’t realized it, but you’re absolutely exhausted. The bone deep kind that tells you if you want you could sleep until Sunday, but you won’t. Because you’re waiting on updates and tomorrow you’ll see Natalie, or what remains of her. You wonder how long Natalie has been dead for, if you’re too late by a day, or an hour, you’ll find out soon enough. You open your eyes when you hear footsteps approaching you. Above you stand your friend group, all of them in varying states of shock, but more importantly, Nik is extending a hand to you. 

“How long did you know Katalina was the murderer?”

You take the hand, letting him haul you to your feet as you sway, “Noon. We’re narrowing down who the partner is, but earlier when Katalina called me she gave herself away.”

“What’d she say?”

Perhaps it’s the shock but your lips curve into a dazed smile, “She tried to throw me off my game. But she asked how I couldn’t not know, how I couldn’t figure it out. She challenged my intelligence, and then she went for feelings. She tried to rile me up using my dad as ammo, she asked, and I quote ‘I think you want to forget a lot of things, doesn’t surprise me you know, with your dad being there and all. Bet you feel like you’re five again, huh? Daddy’s little girl who sits on his lap and reads her big girl books. Are you gonna fall apart when he inevitably leaves again?’”

You make your way to the living room again, grabbing another slice of baklava, “Unfortunately for her I can do something called emotional processing and compartmentalizing. I can deal with my personal issues another day. What I won’t do is let words keep me from catching a serial killer.”

Veronica stares at you for a second, “That’s-That’s kind of scary.”

You shrug, “It’s only scary because you don’t understand how it works. It got me through dinner with her, it let me ask all the questions we needed answered. There’s a confession, a location, they’ll work on getting her partners’ name and recovery. We got what we needed and this weekend, once I can catch a fucking break, I’ll deal with my emotions.”

“You don’t deal with them as soon as they come up?”

“Vi I’m a Hotchner, and Hotchner’s don’t do things like emotions, not when we’re out in the field.”

“You’re not in the field anymore though, not right now, you’re in your apartment so please show something other than this unnerving calm. Please.”

You shoot her a look, “I’m not asking you to stop showing emotions so do not ask me to show them because you’re uncomfortable that I’m not.”

“Are you uncomfortable with us showing emotion then?”

You stand, you’re tired, you feel sick to your stomach, there’s filth everywhere in your apartment and this is why you don’t host but maybe twice a year. There’s too many people, your clothes are clinging to you in ways that make you want to peel your skin off. Your hair is touching you and they want you to be more emotional. Then they’ve gone and flipped your words on you. 

“Get out. Now.”

“Excuse me?”

You level your gaze at her, “Here’s my emotions, front and center. Get. Out.”

“This isn’t-”

“What you wanted? What you expected? Did you want my hands to shake, did you want me to start crying maybe? Maybe I’d throw something against the wall. What, did you want to see me fall apart or something?”

“Of course not, it’s just, we’ve got confirmation Natalie is dead, she’s gone and you’re just-just-”

“Standing here with a grip on myself because I can’t afford to fall apart at the moment. You do realize there were two of them and one of them is still out there, right?”

She falters and Priyani tugs at her arm gently, “Now isn’t the time. This is a case, you know how she handles cases.”

“By being an unfeeling, icy bitch?”

This time it’s emotions driving her words, they’re not spoken to throw you off your game, they’re just spoken because she doesn’t know what else to say or how to say it. You could stand here and take it, but the case is personal, “I won’t repeat myself, get out before I force you out. Natalie is dead, I intend to find the one who physically took her life.”

Veronica, caught between her anger and denial, shakes her head, “No, no, we’re staying here. You’re going to include us in every detail, you’re going to share every update with us, she was our friend too. You don’t-you don’t get to just hold that information from us.”

“And you’re delusional to think that’s going to happen. Are you the prosecutor in the room, are you the one with an autobiographical memory? Where were you in that damned room looking at every nitty gritty detail of those girls' corpses? Were you the end target to a string of gruesome murders? Did you have to pretend like you weren’t seconds away from putting a bullet into who should’ve been a friends’ mouth? Was that you? Or was that me?”

She opens her mouth and closes it like a fish, “That isn’t-”

“It’s the truth. Now get the fuck out of my apartment so we can both process that. I can’t think with all of you in here, or with the fifty-six dishes that wait for me or the fact that I’ve been in the same socks for fifteen or so hours. I’m waiting for pictures of Natalie’s corpse, I do not need any of you in here right now, or this mess.”

They leave because there’s nothing they get out of staying. You clean because it’s the one thing you have control over. Leftovers get put away, dishes left to soak and others in a washer that you’ve started. Then you thankfully, blissfully, get to shower, and when you shower you don’t hear the door open again. Why would you? You need a key to get into the building, your apartment door is locked too. You go through your night-routine easily, and it’s only when you hear the click of a gun that you feel your blood run cold. 

“Put on a pair of underwear, a bra, and a big coat to conceal yourself.”

“Who are you?”

“My name is Milo Lovelette. Katalina let me in, she gave me a mission to complete.”

“You’re the sculptor.”

“I am.”

You turn to face him. He’s got a gun pointed at your chest, he’s tall, muscular, his face average but leaning towards ugly. His hands are steady. Surgeon hands. He’s in control right now, and he knows it, “Do you have a matching set?”

“I do.”

“What colors?”

“Black, pink, green, purple, red, orange.”

“Wear the red set.”

You have no weapons here, you also know you can’t make a break for it, so you’ll do what you can. As you rummage through your clothes you twist some shirts to spell out SOS before grabbing what you need. You’re already naked so you get dressed in front of Milo, acutely aware of how he hovers close, too close, “Wear these with it, and go do your makeup.”

There’s no choice but to comply, hair being done up again as you do a fresh face of makeup. You draw on your calmness, the ability to compartmentalize. You need to focus, you need to escape somehow, someway. Somewhere out there your father searches for Natalie’s corpse, with your eyeliner you write down on the inside of the sink Milo Lovelette and then you finish getting ready with a perfume of his choice. He takes you aggressively, arm latched with his and a purse you rarely use slung over your shoulder, phone left behind on the table. 

He drags you to his car, it’s a shit box and it smells but none of it matters when you start trying to think of how you can get out of the situation, “Why did you make me put lingerie on?”

Milo works his jaw as he glances at you, “Katalina promised you to me.”

“Promised?”

“She asked what I wanted most in the world. I told her a muse, she gave me one. You.”

You think you might puke, right there in the car all over your three thousand dollar shoes, “Oh.”

He takes you to a part of San Francisco you haven’t frequented often, and then he starts making his calls. He refers to you as Scarlett even though it isn’t your name and it makes you wonder what you’ve been dragged into. Then he takes you into the building, it’s lavish despite the outside of it. Sleek hallways and warm lighting that should ease you but it feels wrong to be there. Your heels click as you walk, and the farther you go the more unease you feel. Milo takes you into a room, the lighting is darker here but there’s big windows overlooking the city and a bed. The bed is bloodstained. 

“Take the coat off.”

You let it pool to the floor, trying not to flinch when his hand takes a fistful of your ass and gives it a squeeze, “You’re perfect, did you know that?”

You glance at him, at the obsessive look in his eye when he drinks your body in, “I knew from the moment she showed me a picture of you that you were meant to be mine. That you’d look stunning in my bed. Katalina said you didn’t have a boyfriend, that you needed to be taught how to be a proper woman. Do you know what a proper woman is?”

Answering feels like a death sentence, but your silence might not save you either, “Tell me?”

He smiles, knuckle caressing your face, “You women don’t know anything, not really. There’s no reason for any of you to be in universities unless it’s to assist us men. I know you’re a smart thing, but smarts don’t matter when you have a pretty face. I don’t know why you insist on all these degrees when your true purpose isn’t bound to a court room but a home. Don’t worry though, I promise I’ll show you what you really need. I’ll make you a wife, a mother, but only once you’ve proved yourself as my wife. Tonight, we’ll make it official.”

“How so?”

“I’ve called some people, they’re going to watch us consummate our marriage.”

You’re going to be raped, and people are going to watch. It makes your head spin in the worst way possible, “And after?”

“And after I’m going to have your heart for eternity.”

Which means you might be dead by sunrise, “How’d you kill Natalie?”

Milo’s smile widens, “I thought she looked like you, so with her I practiced how to be a good husband. I didn’t need her heart though, I only need yours.”

“Why can’t my family be at our wedding?”

“Because they’ll try to take you from me, especially your dad, the FBI agent. Don’t worry, he can have you back eventually, but he’ll never have your heart.”

It’s not often that you’ve felt fear before but in this moment you feel nothing but fear. Raped and murdered, that might be how you go down and you refuse for that to be your legacy. You’ve earned four degrees, you’re president of the oldest law fraternity on campus (it’s technically pre-law but they begged you to come be president). You’re a prosecutor, you’ve been entertaining the idea of the BAU for the past few days since you got thrown on the case. 

“When will you consummate our marriage?”

“As soon as our witnesses arrive, go, lay down on the bed.”

The bloodstain is not welcoming, even more so with how wet it is. Fresh blood, Natalie’s blood, and you’re getting covered in it. The shoes stay on and you stare at the ceiling, hoping, praying, that you’re rescued or you find an escape route. You think about it, how you’d rather die than be assaulted like he plans on doing. 

“Have you had other wives before?”

You hear him sharpening a blade, “I’ve had six wives.”

“Who were they?”

“Deborah Hank, Loralie Harvey, Anastasia Cove, Angelina Pear, Constance Smith, and then there was Bianca Lane. You’ll be the seventh wife, lucky number seven.”

You don’t feel lucky, you feel all shades of awful as you plan how to get out of the building, “Will I still be pretty once you’ve gotten my heart?”

“You’ll be the prettiest one in the room. Always.”

Then there’s nothing to do but wait. 

__________

Hotch knows something’s wrong as soon as he steps into your apartment, the phone ringing on your counter. It’s empty, he knows that as soon as he’s inside. The team waits outside for him, he said it’d be a quick check in, but when he comes to your bathroom, when he spots the name you’ve written down, he knows it isn’t going to be quick. He’s got Reid on call in an instant, “Get the team up here. Now.”

He goes to your bedroom, the light is on but you’re gone. A coat is missing, so is a pair of shoes, he yanks the drawer open to find the SOS sign staring back at him. The door opens again and the light comes on, “Hotch?!”

Hotch stalks his way out, “Milo Lovelette, he’s kidnapped her. He’s the second unsub.”

Spencer straightens up, “Where did you find that?”

“She wrote down his name in the bathroom sink with eyeliner. I opened up one of her dresser drawers and found sos spelled out with her shirts. She’d showered so he probably came in when she was showering, made her get dressed and put on makeup so suspicions wouldn’t be raised when she left.”

“How’d he get in here?”

“Katalina let him into the building, he probably picked the lock to get into her apartment, Morgan have Garcia pull up security footage and a home address or any address associated with him. With Katalina in our hold he knows he doesn’t have the luxury to take his time with her.”

Morgan nods, phone already flipped up with Penelope on the other end as Spencer heads to your room to look at the SOS signal, he’d told you to stay behind. He didn’t want you to see Natalie’s corpse knowing that you’d already seen enough and even if you didn’t see it he and Hotch could see that you were nearing your limits. Hence why they made you stay behind, but you’d been kidnapped from your own home, and now they were running on a strict time-limit. 

JJ takes her turn with the drawers, opening one up in particular that makes her shut her eyes, “Looks like our unsub wanted her in something particular, she’s missing a lingerie set.”

Hotch does not want to imagine that, Spencer at least knows time and place. Now is not one of those occasions, “That’s different than what the other girls were found in, none of them were wearing lingerie.”

Morgan flips the phone shut, “Natalie’s results haven’t come back yet but none of them showed signs of sexual abuse."

Emily doesn’t dare look at Hotch, “She was the final target, she obviously held some sort of superiority over the other girls. What if she was part of Katalina’s deal with the unsub in order to get him to do her bidding? Like an arrangement.”

“We need to talk to Katalina again then, she might know something.”

They take off, heading back to Katalina in her interrogation room. She hadn’t cried or thrown a fit, she’d just stayed stubbornly silent. That wasn’t going to happen anymore though, not when Hotch all but ripped the door open. She flinched hard when he stepped in and although the team exchanged looks they didn’t interfere, not when he was like this. 

“Milo Lovelette. Where would he hide?”

Her eyes widen for a second before her face smoothes down, “How should I know?”

“You’re his accomplice, you promised my daughter to him, where has he taken her?”

She shrugs, “Again, how should I know?”

“Tell me do you like solitude?”

“What?”

“Do you like the quiet, when it’s just you and your thoughts? Can you stand that noise that fills your ears when there’s no noise to fill them up except for your voice when you speak to yourself?”

“I don’t talk to myself, what does this have to do with anything?”

“Because depending on your answer you’re either going to solitary confinement for a few years or for life. You’re manipulative, vindictive, and you have a thirst for revenge that’ll turn the prison yard into your playground. All traits of someone that’ll land them in a white walled room where they see someone once a day and it isn’t on a personal basis either. It’s clinical, cold, you’re going to be alone. Now, do you want that to be your future? Or do you want that to be something you endure until you learn how to be with people again?”

Katalina stares at him for a second before she turns away, “The address is 3321 Cod Circle. Fifteenth floor, go to the left, then turn right, and go to the apartment in the corner at the end of the hallway.”

“Good, now what does he want with her?”

“She’s going to be his wife. The guy is weird, has an obsession with wives and teaches them how to be perfect for him.”

Hotch is silent for a second, and then he stands, “You will never, ever, be allowed to eat lunch with another person ever again. I hope you know that.”

He leaves her there with an address in hand and a hope that you’re still untouched wherever you are. Lingerie, makeup, a big black coat and heels. Hotch is going to put a bullet through Milo’s head, he’ll make sure of it. 

____________

You didn’t expect for there to be twelve men watching the consummation of marriage. They wore white and sat in chairs that had been set up by Milo, they wore masks over their faces, silent and straight backed as they stared at you. You who laid in the bed, an uncharacteristic tremble in your body when you felt the bed dip under his weight. You didn’t dare look when his knife ran along your thigh before digging in and dragging. 

Warm blood began to run down the side, pooling onto the bed below as you did your best not to flinch or make a sound, “See? She’s learning already.”

Your other thigh received the same treatment, then he dragged the knife up to your stomach, right where your womb lay, “This is your most prized possession. Within this you can create life, you can grow my offspring within you, and when I rejoin you in the afterlife you and the rest of my wives will have my children raised for me. Because that is what you’re good for; Breeding, and raising. As a woman this is your god-given duty, and as a man I will ensure you fulfil this creed.”

Then the knife dips into your skin and he begins to carve a circle around your stomach, it isn’t deep but it’s enough to make it to where you bleed, you know it’ll scar if given the chance. Your fingers twitch to take the knife from him, to drive into his face, his neck, and you might go down trying but at the very least it’ll mean you went down fighting. You endure it though, waiting for the right moment when he drags the knife up, up, up. 

Your hand shoots up to grip his wrist, and in his surprise you manage to deliver a kick to his head. His grip loosens just enough for you to grab the knife and once you feel it in your hand you bring it down on him. Right into his chest, but unfortunately another man manages to grab you and shove a different knife into your side. It makes you shriek as pain blooms beneath your eyes, so strong your vision fades for a second, especially when he removes it and more blood spills out your side. 

That isn’t enough though, you reach behind you to stab him too, right in the neck and then the other men are amongst you. But you stab like a frenzied animal, with two knives in hand and nothing but blind desperation to get out of the place. The pain makes you sluggish but adrenaline fuels you, allowing you to injure enough men that you can flee. You remember the route, heels clicking faster as the men shout to follow you but you’re already farther ahead than them. You won’t fail, even when you get dizzy as your bloodstained fingers desperately push at the elevator button. You plead for it to open as the footsteps hurry, but the door opens and you scramble to close it, pressing the ground floor level and the door closes just as a singular knife flies through the air, embedded itself into your shoulder. 

Not that it matters, you press a hand to your wound, bracing yourself to run again as the doors open and you fly out of the place. You don’t stop running either. It doesn’t matter that you’re in nothing but lingerie and heels, you’re covered in blood and it hurts. Oh god it hurts. You know you’re running out of steam, the adrenaline is fading, but you also know stopping means your death. You need to find a place to hide, a place you can escape to. 

Someplace the men can’t reach you. You look around frantically in an attempt to find some sort of civilization but there’s none, and hiding in an alley isn’t an option since you’re leaving a blood trail behind. You keep running, you can’t stop running. You take twists and turns and finally a convenience store is there, a gas station attached to it. You stumble in, ignoring the horrified gasps from people as you all but claw your way to the cashier, “Phone.”

They hand it to you quickly, and you dial Hotch’s number, he answers on ring two, “Who is this?”

“Dad.”

You don’t regret saying it, not when you sway dangerously and you pass the phone to the cashier who gives the address then back to you, “They’re-They’re coming after me, hurry.”

A woman locks the doors just as your legs give out. The people shout but you’re too far gone to stop yourself. You shriek as the pain hits you full force, there’s blood coming out from your side, a knife sticking out of your shoulder. You’re borderline nude and you know your hair is messed up six weeks to Sunday. None of it matters though, not when your vision is going in and out and you know you’re running out of time. You gave it hell, gave them hell, whoever they are. 

You’ve done your best, you know that. You can die satisfied knowing that you ended this man who took so many other lives before you. He didn’t get you though, you got him. A woman kneels beside you. She’s older, closer to your mothers age but she takes your hand, it’s warm, comforting, “Can you tell me your name?”

Because you need to live, you need to survive, you tell it to her, “Hotcher.”

“Alright Miss. Hotchner, can you tell me what happened?”

You swallow, letting your eyes shut, “Milo Lovelette, he kidnapped me, tried to rape me, he had twelve companions in white robes and masks who sat around the bed and watched. I-I stabbed him, I killed him. I killed seven of them, the rest are cha-chasing me. Ohhh fuck-”

For a moment sound fades away while your body lurches forward, vomit spilling from your lips to splatter against the floor beside you but you don’t care about that very much. You feel floaty, yet in so, so much pain, something is wrong, horribly wrong, “That’s okay Miss. Hotchner, that’s okay, let it out.”

There’s something wrong with the vomit, it’s too red, you didn’t eat anything red for dinner, “I need my Dad, he’s-he’s workin’ the case, gotta tell him I caught the guy, Mama will-she will, bars. Mhmm.”

“How old are you, Miss. Hotchner?”

“M’ twenty-two.”

“Are you in college?”

“Uh-huh.”

“What for?”

You have to think for a moment, everything’s farther apart, harder to recall despite it all, “Li-Linguistics and brain science.”

“Wow Miss. Hotchner, those are some good degrees, are you excited to graduate?”

Her question makes you smile, even though your mouth is full of blood, “Yuh, I-I want my Dad to be there this time. I graduated thrice, he has to be there this time.”

“You’ve graduated three times?”

“Mhm, high school, college, law school, now this, next Spring.”

“You must be brilliant.”

“M’a genius, 176, same as my LSAT scores.”

“Well can you use that big brain of yours to keep your eyes open? Your parents want to see you, they’d be sad if you were asleep when they came by.”

Everything’s getting fuzzier and you aren’t sure if you’ll be able to stay awake. You think of your mother, the strongest woman you know. Your brothers, the physical extensions of you that you adore with all your heart. Your father who left and came back and you should hate him, but you want him back nonetheless. You think of your friends, the heartbreak on their faces as they sit around your table and you don’t think you can crush their spirits anymore. You think of Spencer, the possibilities are endless with him, possibilities you want to explore. 

“Would you-would you tell them I’m sorry? I ran so fast.”

Her face does something funny, you can’t really tell though with how your vision starts to get fuzzy, “Tell-tell my Dad I know why he did what he did, it’s okay now, because he’s back.”

More blood spills over your mouth, dripping onto your chest, “And my Mama, she-she can handle it. The twins have to graduate, I want a seat saved. My friends can raid my closet, and Spencer. I would’ve liked having a chance with Spencer.”

She shakes her head, cupping your face, “Now Miss. Hotchner, they’ll be here any minute, you can’t leave them waiting.”

A hot tear spills down your cheek, the first in years, “I just wanted to make someone proud.”

“They’re very proud of you, I promise you that much. You’re smart, you’re beautiful, you’re kind, all you have to do is hang on, okay?”

“I think I might disappoint them this time.”

“You won’t be disappointing anybody, no matter what happens.”

You sniffle, “I’m tired.”

She croons softly, tucking a strand of hair behind your head, “I know you’re tired, but stay awake a little bit longer, okay?”

Her voice sounds far away though, and everything’s getting brighter. You see her lips moving but you can’t hear what she’s saying, you can’t hear anything, but you think you see red and blue lights flashing in the distance and you smile for it because, “My Dad’s here, he’s here.”

__________

Hotch doesn’t know what he expects when he bursts through the doors, but you on deaths’ door isn’t one of them. You had sounded strained on the phone call, not, not this. The woman sitting beside you scrambles out of his way when he kneels beside you, “Honey I need you to respond to me, I need you to talk.”

But there’s nothing coming out of you, just that faraway look in your eyes as your body starts to fail. It’s a look he’s seen on people before, the look that tells him it’s going to take a miracle for you to survive. He has to see it through though, he has to see your eyes again, to hear your voice. You’d been so strong, so vibrant despite the dark color pallet and aura around you. Your jaw moves, something a little more alive returning to your eyes, “Dad, you came.”

He exhales sharply, he hadn’t even known he was holding his breath, “Of course I came, I’ll always come from now on.”

“No promises.”

“This is a promise.”

You huff, breath laboured and shallow, “I’m sorry, I-I couldn’t-”

“None of that, you did your best, you did plenty, you’re going to be okay, alright?”

The glassiness creeps back in, “I like pancakes on Tuesdays.”

Tuesdays, once upon a time, had been a reserved time for breakfast for dinner instead of actual dinner. It was like that because you never got to eat breakfast with your parents who left for work too early to do such a thing. So Tuesdays were reserved for breakfast instead of dinner. You’d loved pancakes, you liked it best if you had a plain one and another with chocolate chips in it. 

“We can make pancakes on Tuesday.”

You don’t respond, and Hotch’s fingers fly to your pulse, it’s thready, barely there. You won’t last much longer, “How long until the paramedics get here?!”

Spencer kneels on your other side, they’d done what they could for your wounds but with the damage sustained they could only do so much, “ETA one minute tops.”

Then your pulse falters and your body goes completely limp, slumping towards Hotch who catches you, immediately setting you down to start compressions on your chest as Spencer shouts that you’re down. Morgan is the one to shove Hotch aside to take over chest compressions, Emily grabs him in the same motion, dragging him back, “He’ll take care of her.”

Hotch can only stare as your body jolts, and then get transferred to the ambulance, he watches as you get sped away. Spencer is the one to guide him to the car and the rest spread out to search for the others, and the building Katalina had named. They go to the hospital, Spencer behind the wheel, and he feels like he’s floating from somewhere far away. You’d died, your pulse gone and eyes blank, your body drenched in blood both from you and whoever you attacked to get to freedom. 

He walks with steady feet but doesn’t zone in until the doctor approaches, her face grim as she calls for Hotchner. He stands first, quick with purposeful strides as he goes to her, “I’m her father, how is she?”

The doctor grimaces, “She’s extremely unstable but in surgery. Her iliac artery was nicked when she was stabbed and not to mention the incredible amount of strain her body went through when she escaped. With all her injuries she ran over a mile towards safety, that’s borderline inhuman. Unfortunately these are the only updates I can give for right now, I’ll try to come when I can. Have you informed any of her other family?”

“Not yet, what should I inform them?”

“To come quickly, urgently. There’s no guarantee that she’ll see the sunrise.”

“Thank you.”

She nods once, “And for what it’s worth, your daughter is incredible for all she’s managed to do. I hope her strength lasts when she’s on the table.”

Hotch all but collapses back in his seat as Spencer focuses on the area around them. You’re in surgery, it doesn’t look great, and someone needs to call your mother. Hotch resigns himself to the task, “I’m going to inform her mother.”

“I’ll be here.”

Hotch steps away to a small room when he flips his phone open, dialing a number he thought he might never have dialed again. Your mother picks up on the last ring possible, voice thick with sleep, “Aaron?”

He shuts his eyes as her voice comes over him. A voice he’d loved and lost, and he doesn’t know how to face this, how he’s going to tell her that you’re dying on the surgery table, “Aaron did something happen?”

“Our daughter is in the hospital, she-she might not make it through the night.”

“What?”

“She was kidnapped from her apartment and in her escape sustained potentially lethal injury. We’re at UCSF Medical Center, just, please. They don’t know if she’ll make it off the table.”

“Oh my god, oh my god. We’re on our way, oh god, oh god.”

She hangs up and Hotch takes a second to himself. You might not make it off the table, he’d watched every fathers’ worst nightmare come to life before his very eyes. He doesn’t even know if you’ve been raped by that man. On the way back to Spencer he gets a call from Morgan, “Hey we just checked out the apartment, she uh, she got eight of them, Milo included. Hotch, she fought like hell in here.”

“She killed eight men?”

“Sure did, we’ll have pictures but it’s an absolute blood bath in here. We didn’t even need to figure out which apartment she was being held in, there’s bloody red bottom shoe prints coming from the door to the elevator.”

“She ran a mile in those shoes.”

“How’s she doing over there?”

“Not well, they’re preparing for her not to make it off the table.”

“Oh hell, we’ll get this wrapped up over here and then head over.”

“Get me those pictures, I need to see them.”

“Will do.”

The line goes dead and he returns to Spencer, eternally fidgeting Spencer who all but jumps when Hotch takes a seat again, “How’d it go?”

“Her mothers frantic, Morgan’s getting photos from the crime scene. According to him she left bloody stiletto prints all the way from the apartment to the elevator, and then she also left eight bodies to cool in that room.”

Spencer blinks, “Eight bodies?”

“Milo included. The other eight have yet to be named.”

“I see.”

They fall silent for a minute, maybe ten, before Hotch sighs, “And if you didn’t think I’d notice you two playing footsie under the table you’re mistaken.”

“Oh god.”

Hotch raises a brow at him, “According to sources, you were at my daughter's apartment last night. All of last night, except for of course when you two went to the club. And Morgan was very vocal about your activities the night prior.”

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I-I-”

“Reid.”

Spencer’s mouth shuts with an audible click as Hotch raises his hand, “When my daughter recovers well enough you’re going to take her on a proper date. You’re going to give her more than a club and drunken fornication.”

“Sure, yes, one hundred percent you got it.”

“And for what it’s worth, I can see you two being good for each other.”

Spencer pauses, unsure of where to go with this information, “Really?”

Hotch tilts his head back, eyes shutting, “You’re both geniuses who graduated early and started getting degrees like the British took over countries. Your emotions are worn on your sleeve, hers are stored away in a pandora's box. If anybody is curious enough to open that box it’s you, and out of anybody, you’re the most equipped to help her handle them.”

“I’ll do my best then.”

“I know you will, hence why I’m giving you this one pass.”

“Thank you, Hotch.”

“Mm, now shut your eyes, they’re going to strain themselves looking for things you can’t see yet.”

____________

Your mother comes in an hour later, your younger brothers hot on her heels. For all that you look like your mother, your brothers take an awful lot of Hotch after them. Of course they see your mother in them, like their skin tone and the lips. But the brows, the nose, the eyes, the hair, the face structure, all of that is Hotch. Like if Hotch were brown, that’d be them. 

She comes in a frenzy and as soon as she sees Hotch, your blood all over him, she breaks apart, “What happened? Aaron, tell me right now where is our baby girl? What did they do to her?”

Hotch sits her down, swallowing at the looks of incredulousness on the other two boys' faces. They were so young when he left, they’d known him through phone calls and rare visits, but they were thirteen when he officially exited their lives. When he married Haley. When she pursed her lips every time he called and clicked her tongue when he used his vacation to go over to see you and the twins. He doesn’t know why he gave in, why he went the route that he did. 

“We’ve been working on the case of the sorority girls turned statues. Natalie went missing, she got pulled in on the case because she was one of the last people who’d seen her and her memory. Her knowledge of the student body and the people around her, it’s unparalleled. She unraveled the case and found out our unsub was actually two people, amongst them Katalina. Who we arrested earlier tonight after our daughter hosted a dinner party with her friends.”

He sighs, body dropping a bit, “They left, and we didn’t know that Katalina had let the second unsub in. Milo Lovette, who had an obsession around making innocent girls into his wife, the only one with full details on what he was doing and planning to do is her. We believe she was not his first victim, but she was certainly his last. It’s reported that there were twelve men in the room, not including Milo. Who broke into her apartment once everyone left and forced her to get ready. We believe he was planning on assaulting her sexually before he inevitably murdered her. As far as we know it didn’t happen, she left eight bodies, including his, behind during her escape. She ran a mile in her heels to safety.”

Your mother stares at him, something broken all over her face, “How could this have happened to her?”

“I don’t know. It was ultimately Katalina’s fault for putting the idea of her as a wife for Milo in his head. She was using him to kill the other sorority girls so she didn’t even have to lift a finger.”

“She called me earlier today, we were supposed to get lunch tomorrow.”

“I know.”

“And she’s-she’s still in surgery?”

“She is, we’ve had no updates since the first one.”

“Alright. We can-did you see her? Before the ambulance took her?”

“I did.”

“Was she coherent?”

“Barely, she, the last thing she said was she likes pancakes on Tuesdays.”

Your mother breaks then while your brothers grip each other's hands and stare off into the distance. Spencer stands, almost abruptly, “I need to call her friends and inform them of what’s going on.”

He leaves quickly, leaving the Hotchners to grieve for someone who’s almost dead, but not quite there yet. He doesn’t need to listen to the conversation that’ll happen when he’s gone, instead he takes the list of contacts that belong to your friends and dials the first one: Nikolas. 

“Hello?”

“This is Doctor Spencer Reid, are you Nikolas Perez?”

“I am. What’s going on?”

Spencer braces himself, “Small Hotchner’s in the hospital, she was kidnapped by the secondary unsub after you all left. She escaped, but we don’t know if she’s going to survive. How fast can you gather your friends and come to UCSF Medical Center?”

“Oh my fuck we’ll be there within the hour, what the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck went wrong after we left?”

“A lot of things, but she fought tooth and nail to get out, she succeeded.”

“What do I tell people?”

“You tell them she’s in the hospital in critical condition, tell them to get their asses up and over here.”

“Right, of course, we’ll be there shortly.”

Spencer hopes so for your sake. 

_____________

Morgan comes in our hour five to a whole waiting room full of familiar faces, even though three of them he hasn’t been introduced to yet. He hands the file over to Hotch regardless, “It was a cult that abducted her. Milo was the leader of it, but there's a lot of evidence, and we might’ve accidentally stumbled on something bigger than we anticipated.”

Hotch opens the folder and there’s the bloody footprints. Your bloody footprints, the trail of dripping blood joining. The next picture is the elevator, your blood swept over the buttons, and then down the panel on the inside. The pool of blood is bigger there. The next photos are of the path you took, the blood trail you’d left behind up until the gas station where they’d found you. The next pictures are the bodies. Men in white with red stained robes, Morgan was right about the bedroom looking like a bloodbath. 

Spencer looks at them with him, eyebrows raised when he sees the level of violence that went down in the room. Your bodies rest in mostly whole pieces, but there’s an ear, some fingers, and a nose on the ground found in various places. Your coat pooled on the floor, the evidence of you in the bed through blood stains, some fresher than others. Fought like hell he’d said, he was right about that too. 

“Have we managed to identify the seven other bodies?”

Emily glances his way, “We’re sending dental records in, there should be matches pulled up soon enough. They’re young men, similar age, varying degrees of attractiveness, Milo might’ve been the leader but I doubt he was the big boss of this operation.”

The case had been a rough one; with JJ stuck back at home having had her new baby, Rossi away on a book tour, and Derek out on an injured knee from a renovation incident. JJ’s liaison duties had fallen to you, to your silent horror.

It wasn’t that you were bad at public speaking or presenting. It’s just, your palms got all sticky with sweat, your legs shook, and there was a tightness in your chest that you knew was going to stick around for hours.

Which was not exactly ideal when trying to impress your hot boss.

So you stuffed your anxiety down and did what needed to be done. Because even false confidence had to become actual confidence at some point, right?

As of that moment though, you wouldn’t dare let Hotch know you felt out of your depth. Not while you had something to prove, and especially not when any amount of his attention gave you butterflies in your stomach.

With you on PR duty, the stress that Emily and Spencer were under had doubled.

And with Rossi gone, Hotch had no one to split the administrative duties with.

Which left you all so busy that you had barely seen much of Spencer and Emily. While you and Hotch had been alone together at the station the entire time, with little more than orders and questions conveyed back and forth between the two of you.

Until Hotch had gathered you all into a conference room together to go over the evidence and write up the profile—press releases and administrative bullshit be damned.

Which left you reeling, because the three of them were just as stressed as—if not more so than—you, and when they got stressed...

They tended to get undressed.

Not completely—obviously—just a suit jacket here, a few popped buttons there, maybe some rolled up sleeves and messy hair.

But a girl could dream.

And God, did you dream vividly.

Nothing about Hotch escaped your notice. The width of his shoulders and chest made you itch to splay your hands over them. His thick hair would look so tempting between your thighs. You wondered if he would like the way you’d tug on it as he devoured you. Even the way the man dressed drove you crazy. His suits must have been tailored, because they fit far too well for your sanity. His silk ties looked soft and pullable. Your fingers itched to give them a good tug, preferably while guiding him to your lips.

Your attraction to Spencer was different from how you lusted after Hotch.

Spencer had an innocence and pureness about him that was impossible not to adore… An innocence you fantasized about corrupting. You often watched Spencer read, a habit you couldn’t break. It was so hard to look away, however, when he drug his fingers down the page, gentle and reverent. You wondered how that would feel against your ribs. Or lower. His sweet smiles often tempted you to tease him mercilessly. The way his amber eyes lit up when he rambled on made your stomach fill with butterflies. His soft voice always left your heart pounding and your pussy throbbing. Not that he knew that—thank God—though even if he did, it would just embarrass him.

Emily was, well… Emily.

Confident, strong, sassy and could break you in half, something you definitely wished she would do. Her dark hair and porcelain skin were a thing of beauty. The way she held herself with such surety was enthralling. Her clever and bold personality was absolutely deadly, both to unsubs and your libido. You often wondered how it would feel to earn her attention. She had a ‘take charge’ attitude in the field that you were almost sure would extend to the bedroom as well. You found yourself daydreaming about her scarlet lips giving commands of the erotic variety, smiling, and calling you a good girl… Among other things you imagined they would be very good at.

In layman's terms you were metaphorically fucked.

If only you could get physically fucked… specifically, by one of them.

Alas, it’s against regulations to fuck your co-workers. So your imagination, that new vibrator, and—if you were lucky—a wet dream or two would just have to do.

Being alone with one of them was truly a battle between your common sense and your carnal imagination.

However, being in a room with all of them… that was enough to put you in a mental crisis of truly epic proportions.

Just to make everything astronomically worse, you were pretty sure they had started to notice.

They had all started to notice.

You had been so relieved to wrap up the case and finally head home. Until you realized that heading home meant being on that cramped jet for several hours with just the three of them.

Hotch, who was sitting across from you, had immediately noticed that something was off with your demeanor. You were usually so exuberant, talkative and flirtatious in a way that rivaled even Penelope.

Now your eyes darted around the cabin, never lingering longer than a second on anything—especially a person. Your cheeks were flushed, like you were a little overheated or had spent just a little too long in the sun.

His biggest clue, however, was the way your chest expanded in small rapid breaths. He was growing concerned and was about to ask if you were alright.

Before he could, you offered a quick excuse to Emily—who had been chatting animatedly to you—and headed toward the restroom.

“Okay, has anyone else noticed that she’s been acting strangely all day?” Spencer asked the other two, once the bathroom door latched behind you.

Hotch nodded his head, agreeing with Spencer’s assessment of your odd behavior.

“I agree, she’s not been quite herself this week.” Hotch murmured, raising his brows and shaking his head. “She definitely hasn’t been nearly as flirtatious as she normally is.” The usual crease in his brow returned to its proper place. “She didn’t say anything remotely off-color in front of me at all this week, now that I think about it.”

Your quiet, nervous state was so unlike you—not that he had watched you enough to know.

Usually, you would crack a poorly timed joke or two, earning a disciplinary glare, and he would have to bite back a grin all the way through it.

There were no jokes today, no flirting, just intense focus. Your eyes locked on the evidence board. Never straying for a second, not even when he made an attempt to draw your attention. You only responded when asked a direct question and only made eye contact when absolutely necessary.

He had easily noticed your skittish state. How you seemed to duck out of a room as soon as he entered, or disappear for a while and come back laser focused on anything that wasn’t him.

You were usually quite confident. Or at least did a very effective job at hiding it when you weren’t.

“No kidding.” Emily snorted in halfhearted amusement. “I’ve been trying to snap her out of it the entire flight, and apparently, my flirting only made it worse.”

“Maybe she just doesn’t like girls, Em.” Spencer joked with a smug grin.

“She definitely does…” Emily countered, giving Spencer a healthy dose of side-eye and a knowing smirk. “She flirts with me all the time, and Penelope told me that she has an ex-girlfriend. If anything she doesn’t swing your way.”

In Emily’s humble—expert—opinion, you practically had a flashing neon sign above your head that said: GAY!

Hotch chuckled and shook his head, smiling faintly, “I think you’re both wrong.” He refereed. “She’s bisexual, at the least.”

He glanced up from his case file, his brows raised and a smug smirk on his face.

“She very well could be.” Spencer admitted, his face stuck in that expression that said he was overanalyzing every detail about you that could ever apply to this situation. “We could test that hypothesis…”

His eyes were sparkling with a curiosity that was definitely scientific.

“It’s not a bad idea…” Emily mused. “It could be fun… and we do have five uninterrupted hours of airtime left…”

“Ground rules would be necessary,” Hotch added, murmuring almost as if to himself. Pretending to be lost in the case file again. His eyes traced boredly over the lines of text on the page, “and clear consent, from everyone.”

“Now we’re talking.” Emily smirked, sitting up a little straighter. She had been waiting for a chance to take her harmless flirting into a more serious pursuit. “I'm surprised though, you’re seriously gonna let us do this Hotch?”

“I can’t say I’m not curious to see where it goes…” He admitted, smirking a bit. However, his eyes barely lifted from the page, seemingly disinterested.

He was, in fact, very interested.

He saw the way you looked at him—and the other two—on a regular basis. He knew you were attracted to them.

What he didn’t know—with certainty anyway—was how you would react to an advance by all three of them at once. He was certain, however, that you were in for the surprise of your life—and a very good time—if you let it get that far.

“It’s settled then.” Reid smiled in self satisfaction. “When she comes back out we’ll conduct a little… experiment.”

Then the three of them produced a hurried plan.

When you exited the restroom a few minutes later you were no better—if not worse—off than you had been before. Trying to get yourself off had not only failed, it had also made the problem almost painful. However, staying in the restroom any longer would not only be embarrassing, but suspicious as well.

You tried not to look at Emily when you sat back down, looking anywhere else would be safer. So you shifted, only to catch Spencer’s eye, who was studying you with a strange expression.

The last time you felt so scrutinized, you had been defending your thesis to earn your Master’s.

You decided it was probably safest to stare at your lap instead, fiddling with the hem of your pencil skirt. Anxiously rubbing circles in the cotton fabric between your fingers in an effort to soothe… something. Hoping, praying, that none of them knew it had been hiked around your waist only moments before… with your hand tucked between your thighs.

“Hey, are you alright?” Emily asked softly.

You could feel all three sets of eyes burning into you, you didn’t dare look up. The racing of your pulse was only getting faster.

“Mm hmm.” You nodded, continuing to play with the seam of your skirt and then trying to smooth a run in the delicate black nylon of your stocking. “I’m perfectly fine.”

Your voice was a little higher than normal, and you knew they hadn’t missed it.

“Hmm, I don’t know…” Emily responded, you could hear slight teasing in her voice. “You haven’t been acting fine. In fact, you seem a little stressed,” You could practically feel the grin on her face as she turned, “Hotch, doesn’t she seem stressed?”

“Incredibly stressed.” He agreed, and if you’re not mistaken, that was amusement in his tone.

You flush even brighter.

“You should relax a little.” He suggested in that stupidly hot low timbre of his. He didn’t even have the decency to toss you a glance. You often wondered if anything could tear the man away from his file. God, maybe one of these days you’d strip down and stand in front of him butt-ass naked, just to see if that would do it.

You couldn’t help the little snort of indignant laughter that escaped you, because Hotch’s tone was practically sinful—proving that, yeah, you could get wetter than you already were—and the fact that Hotch, of all people, told you to relax.

“You’re one to talk.” You retorted before you could think better of it. A slight feeling of panic washed over you at your brashness and you risked a glance up at him, his expression was frustratingly neutral.

His eyes, however, held a peculiar spark. A spark that still somehow gave you nothing.

Emily scooted a tad closer to you, turning her body to face yours and pulling her knees up under her on the bench seat.

“Turn around.” She commanded, twirling her finger around in a circle. You raised a brow at her questioningly, unsure of what she was about to do. She rolled her eyes. “Just trust me.”

You sighed—long sufferingly—and did as she asked, turning to face the other end of the jet. Your back now facing the others. You had little indication of what Emily intended to do with your back facing her, but you didn’t have the energy, or the nerve, to argue with her. The only hope in your mind was that she didn’t touch you and send you spiraling down another unfortunate slip-n-slide of arousal.

Then you felt the french pin slide out of your hair, which promptly unfurled and cascaded down your back. The pressure lifted off your scalp, leaving behind a dull ache.

Why had you twisted it so tight that morning?

Oh, that's right.

So you could at least appear put together when you’d realized that it would only be the four of you on the jet home, with no case briefings to distract you.

You could only dream of where you wanted this to go.

Hot mouths, desperate grabs, pleasured moans… snap out of it before you let one slip, holy shit.

You stiffened, very aware that this was a bad idea and tried to pull away.

“Relax…” She cooed, alarmingly close to your ear. You bristled a little further. “I only want to help…”

Her hands slid into your hair then, nails raking over your scalp gently before her fingertips began firmly massaging your temples. Your eyes closed involuntarily and most of the tension fled your body without warning. A little sigh escaped your lips and you felt your cheeks start to burn as you sunk into her hands.

“There, isn’t that better?” She murmured softly, a lilt to her voice you couldn’t quite place yet.

“It does feel nice…” You admitted nervously.

Her fingers trailed down from your temples to the back of your neck. Working into the muscles, tight with the start of a tension headache.

“I bet it does, your knots have knots.” She hummed sympathetically, if not a little disapprovingly. “You shouldn’t let it get this bad. It’s not healthy and it feels painful.”

“It’s been a long week…” You responded a little defensively. “I don’t think I can handle many more cases without JJ and Rossi around.”

The words are almost strangled, her hands on your neck both a blessing and a curse. Then they slide down to your shoulders. Kneading and digging into your traps in an earnest attempt to banish the tension there.

“Why is that?” She asked curiously, but there was something more… sensuous, about the way she said it. It sent a small shiver down your spine that, luckily, was easy enough to conceal. But you still wondered if she felt it.

You tensed up slightly again.

“Because, I am not a trained press liaison. JJ does a much better job, and we’re all better off with more of us in the field. You guys almost ran yourselves ragged trying to get everything done, and Hotch didn’t have Rossi to delegate administrative tasks to. Not to mention the locals were being a pain in the ass the whole time. It honestly felt like a bit of a clusterfuck.” You confessed, though that was only half the truth.

“You did a wonderful job with the press, JJ even texted me to tell me she was proud of you.” Hotch murmured from across the aisle, giving you a rare compliment. You glanced over at him in surprise, you hadn’t known JJ had sung your praises to Hotch as well. “But she told you that herself earlier. So why are you really so anxious?”

“It was just a lot for the four of us to take on, that’s all.” You insisted, but Emily’s hands started to work their way down your spine. She found a particularly sore spot and dug her thumb into it mercilessly, forcing a moan to escape your lips without permission.

“Sorry.” You murmured in absolute mortification.

“Don’t apologize.” Emily hushes you, a sly knowing smile on her face. “I like it when you're vocal.”

That startled you so thoroughly that you actually jumped a little. Any other day and it wouldn’t have phased you at all. That type of flirting was normal from Emily, she liked to make you blush. Tonight, however, you were woefully underprepared for her raunchiness. You laughed nervously, knowing that she would expect you to laugh on a normal day.

“Mmmm, I’m with Hotch.” Spencer hummed, finally entering the conversation. “I think something else has you all worked up. You’re missing Morgan, JJ, and Rossi because they’re a good buffer.”

You almost choked on air, he couldn’t possibly have worked that out so easily.

“I don’t know what you mean.” You lied.

He didn’t respond, and instead shared a glance with the others behind your back. Hotch gave a subtle nod to Emily, and she smiled in pure glee, before pulling your hair to one side and tracing her nose down the side of your neck. Her breath caused goosebumps to rise on your skin.

“You don’t? Are you sure?” She murmured, voice taking on a blatantly seductive tone.

You shot a worried glance in Hotch’s direction, only to find his eyes glazed over. Something heated hiding just beneath the surface.

“I- I’m sure.” You stuttered, every bit of that false confidence you’d been building ripped away in an instant. Leaving you a mess, you squeezed your thighs together once more trying to silence the throbbing ache between them, and his eyes flicked down to track the movement.

“You can’t lie to us. We’ve all been paying attention, sweetheart, and we see everything.” Hotch murmured, his voice thick and husky. “You know better.”

Sweetheart? Oh god. What on earth was happening?

You looked away from him quickly, hoping the truth wasn’t on blatant display in your eyes.

He chuckled softly.

Emily’s hand cupped your chin gently as she turned your head to face her, to face all of them.

“Emily?” You murmured in apprehension. She started to lean in closer to you, much closer. Too close for you to keep your wits about you. “What are you doing?”

She was searching your eyes intently for any hint of discomfort or fear.

She found none.

“This.” She whispered and then her lips met yours.

It was a gentle, seeking kiss. Her lips sure and firm against your own. You couldn’t help but lose yourself in it for a moment. The world narrowed down to her.

Her soft lips against yours. The way her mouth moved, seeking more from you. Her hand skimmed up your jaw from your chin and tangled in your hair as she deepened the kiss, pulling a soft whimper from your throat.

A whimper that was echoed by Spencer, just a few feet away.

His soft needy whine pulled you back down to earth, or rather, inside the jet. Where it suddenly dawned on you that Emily was shoving her tongue down your throat, in front of the team. In front of the team and your boss, who was-unfortunately–a stickler for rules.

Jerking away from Emily, you looked over at Hotch.

“Emily!” You gasped quietly, scrambling backward away from her on the seat. Despite your very, very willing participation. She followed you slowly. “What has gotten into you!?”

You were panting, your breaths shaky, your hands even shakier.

She smiled at you softly and threw a glance back over her shoulder at the others. Her gaze seemed to project, I told you so, as she crawled a little closer to you. You looked around at them then—panicked and breathless—the throbbing between your legs not at all helping you to make sense of the situation.

You focused on Hotch. Your eyes searched his frantically, knowing a reprimand would be swiftly coming your way. Or the inevitable glare of disappointment. Or worse, suspension.

Your jaw nearly hit the floor when he smirked at you instead.

“Don’t stop on my account.” He murmured, his voice thick and low, a slight rasp starting to come through. “It was just starting to get interesting.”

What. The. Fuck.

“W-w-what?” You stuttered, unsure if you had maybe misheard him, or imagined the whole fucking thing.

“You heard what I said.” He shrugged at you. “Don’t stop.”

Your mouth opened and closed, trying to form words when you were pretty sure your brain was on a hiatus.

“But-” You started to argue and he furrowed his brows at you.

This absolutely could not be happening. It was impossible. Any second now you were going to wake up and employ that new toy you had ordered specifically to deal with this issue.

“Are you saying you don’t like it when Prentiss kisses you?” He asked, his expression making it clear that he already knew the answer was no. You searched his eyes intently, looking for any sign that this would end poorly for you. What you saw instead was pure, unadulterated lust. The deep hazel of his eyes was almost consumed by his pupils and dark with hunger. He wanted you, he wanted to watch you make out with Emily, wanted to hear your moans and it was driving him crazy. So you shook your head no. Because you definitely did like the way Emily had kissed you and you wanted more. “Then close your mouth before I use it, and let Emily make you feel better.”

“Okay.” You murmured, barely louder than a whisper.

That was all Emily needed to hear.

Her mouth crashed into yours again and she pressed you back against the seat, slowly laying you down. Her body hovered over yours, the sweet scent of her perfume curling around you and numbing your senses. A moan ripped its way out of your mouth and she devoured it whole as her hand rested softly on your leg, just below the knee length hem of your skirt, and began to push it slowly up your thigh. The coolness of the air on your newly exposed skin made you shiver, a small shuddery breath accompanying it.

Emily grinned against your lips.

“Garters, huh? Can’t wait to see if they match your panties.” She murmured, Hotch and Spencer both groaned.

The idea of the two of them watching the two of you and enjoying it… was enough to make you squirm, the throbbing between your legs became agonizing again. Your thighs were rubbing together seeking any amount of friction…

Until Emily forced her knee between your legs, forcing them apart and not allowing the friction you so desperately needed. Her fingers still slowly dragged your skirt up the expanse of your thigh until she had it hiked up around your waist again.

“So pretty…” Hotch murmured, his voice thick and rough.

You turned your head to look at him, not at all phasing Emily who began kissing your neck instead, and found him sitting with his legs spread. His pants were undone and his long thick member was firmly gripped in his palm. If you weren’t so occupied with the fact Emily had found a spot on your neck that made your entire body tingle, your eyes might’ve bugged out of your head.

Emily’s lips managed to coax another soft moan from you and your attention was temporarily diverted. Your head rolled back a little to give her space to work, which made her chuckle. A sound that you were sure was pure sin.

You heard another sound, a soft moan from across the aisle, and you realized that Hotch…

Wasn’t the only one.

Spencer had taken his out as well, watching you intently while stroking himself slowly. A loud and surprising moan erupted from your lips, pulling soft groans from the three of them in response.

You didn’t know what you wanted more.

Emily’s mouth… or either of the cocks now standing at attention in front of you.

However, the decision would not be left up to you.

Emily’s hand was now popping open the buttons of your blouse one by one. Working her way down your stomach, her mouth following her hands slowly. She was taking her sweet time, kissing, sucking and biting gently. Sucking your skin into her mouth and rolling it softly between her teeth, probably leaving some little red marks. Her head dipping lower and lower toward the apex of your thighs.

More little moans escaped through your heavy, panting breaths.

Her mouth finally hovered over the place you wanted it most. Emily’s breath was hot as she slowly closed her lips around your clit over your black lacy panties. A strangled cry breaking free as you threw your head back, your mouth wide and your eyes closing tightly.

Hotch knelt down behind you, pushing his shoulder under your head, forcing you to look down at Emily between your legs. His hand brushed your hair out of your face gently.

“Do you like having Emily’s mouth between your legs, sweetheart?” He hummed against your temple, placing a tender kiss there.

You opened your mouth to answer, but Emily had other plans, sucking harder on your clit that she had been previously, while flicking at it with her tongue. Your panties weren’t even off yet and she had you nearly in tears from the pleasure.

A strangled, half moan, half gasp left your mouth in the place of words.

Hotch chuckled softly and his breath moved your hair, tickling your forehead.

“Where did that clever mouth go? It was working so well earlier.” His fingers curled around your open blouse, and he gently pulled it off your shoulders. He guided you back onto his shoulder again as he placed kisses to the side of your neck, and then tossed the shirt to Spencer, who brought it to his nose and took a deep breath of your perfume.

“She smells so good…” Spencer mumbled softly, still palming his own erection and watching Emily's head move between your legs.

“You have no idea how good she smells.” Emily groaned, biting the inside of your thigh hard enough to sting and then started to suck a hickey over the indentations her teeth had made.

“Why don’t you take her panties off and tell us how she tastes.” Hotch suggested with a smirk, you groaned softly in agreement. Your hips bucked slightly and that knot in your core squeezed tight.

“You like that idea, huh?” He teased gently, you could feel his grin against your temple. Then he threaded his hand through your hair and pulled your head back to mouth hot kisses down the line of your throat.

“I definitely do.” Emily smirked, then hooked her thumbs into the waist of your panties and slowly began to drag them down your hips. Her fingers deftly unclipping your garters from your stockings, then continuing to drag your panties down your legs until she had freed them completely and tossed them to the floor. Her warm breath fanned out across your skin and yours hitched at the sensation. Much to Emily’s delight, goosebumps pebbled your thighs and she ran her fingertips over them slowly. Which only made them worse.

“It’s not braille.” You hissed at her impatiently. “It’s not going to magically spell anything out.”

“That fucking mouth…” She mumbled as she finally closed the distance between her mouth and your pussy. Your hips bucked at the heat of her tongue as she licked a path from your entrance to your clit.

A strangled cry flew from your lips. Emily’s laugh puffed against you, and the only thing keeping you aware of anything at all was the combination of Spencer and Hotch’s laughs filling the space as well.

“Not such a smartass with a tongue on your pussy are you?” Hotch’s gravelly voice reverberated in your ear before he took your ear lobe in his mouth and bit it gently. “Be good for us and we’ll see just how many times we can make you come.”

You only had the mental capacity to nod… because Emily had just sucked your clit into her mouth and was rolling her tongue over it. That—combined with the gentle suction she so mindfully applied—meant whimpering, nodding, and squirming was all you could manage to do.

The warmth of her mouth was obscene, the slick firmness of her tongue enough to make you see stars. She gave a particularly rough pull of suction against your clit and you couldn’t contain yourself.

“Fuck!” You gasped, throwing your head back and closing your eyes.

Hotch wasn’t having that though.

Especially since Spencer was barely containing his own whimpers and moans from the chair across the aisle, where he was watching the entire scene with rapt attention, soaking in every detail. Hotch took your chin in his hand and forced you to look at Spencer.

“Look at him.” He commanded, growling in your ear. “Look at what you’re doing to him, Sweetheart, and you haven’t even touched him.”

You made eye contact with Spencer then, his eyes full of longing, sweat glistening on his brow and his hand struggling to maintain a steady rhythm on his cock. His chest was heaving from the effort it was taking him to remain in control, you could clearly hear his ragged breaths from your place across the cabin. His cheeks were flushed–a ruddy pink–and his hair was disheveled from his fingers, which he kept dragging through it.

“Spence…” You murmured softly, for no other reason than you felt the need to say his name. To acknowledge him and make sure he knew you saw him. To be certain he knew that you appreciated what you saw.

His cock was so hard it was closer to pink than his natural skin tone and you were anxious to do something about it. It looked almost painful.

You felt like you could hear everything he was thinking as he broke eye contact to study the length of your body, then brought his gorgeous amber doe eyes back yours.

“Tell her how beautiful she looks Reid, talk to her, she loves it when you ramble.” Hotch urged him gently. “Don’t you, pretty girl?”

You really did and the pleading look in your eyes was all he needed to see to know that was true.

“You should see yourself right now, Angel…” Spencer murmured softly, hesitantly at first but the heat in your eyes as you gazed back at him was undeniable, and the boost in confidence he needed. “You’re stunning, absolutely ethereal, bewitching even. From the luster of your hair to the delicate curves of your legs, you look like a dream. Your perfect breasts look so firm and smooth, I want to cup my hands around them just to see how it would feel.”

You moaned softly at that and Hotch hummed his agreement and approval of Spencer’s pretty words. He had to admit he was impressed, Reid seemed to have a way of waxing poetic. He watched with glee as your body reacted, both to Emily’s ministrations and Spencer’s words as he continued to speak. “Darling you are divine, the very smell of your perfume is intoxicating. Your lips are tantalizing and I can only imagine the feel of them on mine would be soft as silk.”

You hung on every word, his voice mesmerizing you as he spoke. You had no idea that Spencer had such a way with words. His poetic phrasing had your heart racing and your stomach fluttering.

Emily’s warm tongue slowly drifted away from your clit, trailing down your pussy to the wetness of your entrance… and she began to leisurely fuck you with it. You moaned so loudly it startled you and bit your bottom lip to stifle the noise.

“They can’t hear you in the cockpit, Angel. The door is too thick and the engines are too loud. Not to mention, they’re wearing headsets to communicate with air traffic control.” Spencer explained quietly.

Hotch’s hands started to travel down your body. One slipping into the black see-through mesh and lace of your bra, the other sliding slowly down your stomach and finding your—recently abandoned—clit. He circled it with his fingertips gently. His other hand firmly massaging your breast and rolling your nipple between his thumb and forefinger. “You heard him, Sweetheart. No one can hear you but the three of us, and like Emily said: we like it when you’re vocal.”

You let out a soft whimper and he hummed in approval.

Emily drew most of your attention back to herself as she replaced her tongue with two fingers, stretching you wider and filling you more satisfyingly than before. She stayed between your legs though, sucking and biting at your thighs as she made her fingers match the pace of Spencer’s hand.

You knew that’s what she was doing because you were still watching him from the corner of your eye, and for every downward stroke of his hand, she thrust her fingers inside you at the same moment. Hotch caught on to what she was doing, and he also began to match that rhythm and pace, kissing and nipping at the column of your throat as he played with your clit and nipples.

“Let go babe, we’ve got you. I can feel how close you are, you’ve got my fingers in a vise.” Emily murmured against the skin of your thigh, pressing a kiss to the place she had just bitten. Hotch hummed against your neck.

“Are you gonna come on Emily’s fingers, Sweetheart?” He murmured, before biting your exposed throat gently and laving at it with his tongue.

All you could do was moan in response.

Emily’s mouth found its way back to your clit, nipping Hotch’s finger playfully to make him move it. He looked down at her with a smirk and flicked her forehead teasingly before bringing his hand up to your other breast.

She rolled her eyes at him and flattened her tongue against your clit, then circled it and finally began sucking on it again as she continued to fuck you with her fingers. Hotch was rolling both your nipples between his fingers and returned his mouth to your throat, you were almost certain he was leaving marks there.

He was and it was completely intentional, it was the weekend, and he intended to give you all two extra days off at the start of next week. They would fade.

Emily was getting worked up herself and the sound of your little pants and moans were driving her to distraction. When you let out a particularly loud whimper, she hummed in satisfaction and the vibration made you throw your head back farther and moan so lewdly that Hotch picked his head up to look at your face.

Your eyes were squeezed shut, your supple lips were shaped in a wide ‘O’ and he couldn’t help himself anymore, your mouth was just begging to be filled.

You were vaguely aware that he had lifted your head off his shoulder and moved to stand, but you were too focused on Emily—and her mouth— to wonder why.

Then something warm bumped your chin.

You opened your eyes and found Hotch standing in front of you, his cock bouncing just out of reach of your mouth. You looked up and met his eyes, questioningly.

He smirked down at you, reaching out and cupping your jaw in his hand. His calloused thumb rubbed a small circle on the smooth skin of your cheek.

“I told you to close your mouth or I’d use it.” He murmured, voice low and rough. His thumb stretched to pull your lip down just a little and let it snap back into place, then brushed the corner of your mouth softly.

You didn’t respond, you just opened your mouth a little wider and offered it to him.

“Fuck.” He murmured, barely louder than a whisper.

Em chuckled quietly and the vibrations ran straight up your spine then down your legs, making your toes curl. You threaded your hands through Emily’s hair, needing something, anything, to hold on to.

“A little wider sweetheart.” Hotch prompted you.

You obeyed immediately, opening your mouth as wide as you could and maintaining eye contact with him. You knew he would like the attention and he did, rewarding you with his thick cock as he slid it slowly into the warmth of your mouth.

He tasted clean, but salty, and the precum that was already leaking from him was sweet as well with a slightly bitter—but delicious—aftertaste. You groaned as you closed your lips around him.

“How does her mouth feel?” Spencer’s voice was strained, he still hadn’t moved to touch you, content to observe.

To learn.

“She’s perfect.” Hotch groaned, his hand buried in your hair fisting it firmly but not roughly. He began to use it to pull you slowly up and down the length of his cock. “Fuck sweetheart, you feel amazing.” He murmured looking down at you affectionately, “You’re so warm, and you’re being so pliant for me.”

You kept eye contact with him, trying to focus on him… While also being on the verge of coming from Emily’s tongue on your clit, her finger pumping in and out of your pussy. All three of them were still matching pace with each other, and it was intoxicating. In and out and in and out, all at the same time.

Realizing how close you were, just needing a little push to fall over the edge, Emily reached up and started rolling your nipple beneath the lace of your bra. Then she slightly changed the angle of her fingers, curling them slightly to brush against your g-spot with every thrust.

You uttered a very strangled cry, the sound muffled around Hotch’s thickness. “Whatever you just did, she liked it. Didn’t you, pretty girl?”

You moaned in response and his hand tightened in your hair, a low hiss sliding through his clenched teeth.

Emily chuckled and kept her pace steady, but the vibration of her laughter around your clit as she sucked on it was all it took to send you spiraling into blissful oblivion.

Your body felt fuzzy and warm and your pussy was pulsing uncontrollably around Emily’s fingers. Your legs were shaking and you finally broke eye contact with Hotch as you scrunched your face up in pleasure. Eyes closed tightly as she fucked you through it, then licked your pussy from bottom to top as though savoring the taste of your orgasm.

Your body slowly relaxed again and when Emily pressed one more kiss to your clit then stood from the couch, you opened your eyes again to look up at her. Panting heavily as you realized now, that Hotch had pulled out of your mouth so that you could breathe through your orgasm.

Emily smirked down at you and then held her two glistening fingers up to the light for Hotch to inspect. He looked at them with a feral sort of hunger in his eyes.

“Do you want to taste her?” Emily asked him, a sly grin on her face as she offered her middle finger up to him. “She’s delicious…” She purred, and Hotch glanced down at you, recovering from your orgasm with a look of pure adoration for Emily in your eyes.

Then he turned his head toward her and grabbed her wrist with his free hand, before drawing her finger into his mouth… and sucking it clean.

You groaned and let your head rest against his hand that was still tangled in your hair.

“Fuck, she tastes like heaven. Reid, you wanna taste?” Hotch asked the younger man, then turned his attention back to you, tugging lightly on your hair. “Get down on your knees for me, Sweetheart.” He coaxed gently.

You obeyed him, getting down on your knees in front of him, but watched Reid and Prentiss as you did it. She was offering her ring finger to him and he was licking it clean and groaning, as he stroked himself a little harder.

Spencer… Spencer who didn’t shake hands because of germs… was licking Emily’s finger, just so he could taste you.

Fuck…

You whimpered softly and Hotch chuckled quietly, using your hair to tilt your face up to look at him .

“You can have him as soon as I’m done with your pretty little mouth.” He murmured teasingly. “Open up sweetheart.” You let your mouth fall open in what you hoped was a sexy expression. “So pretty…” He whispered for the second time that night as he slid his cock back into your mouth.

He used your hair—again, to your delight—to guide your mouth up and down his considerable length. He was taking it slow, going easy on you… you didn’t like that, not one bit. So you surged forward on his cock, taking as much of him as you could without gagging and he let out a sharp, gasping, string of barely intelligible obscenities.

You tried to pull back a bit to do it again… but he held you firmly in place.

“You want me to fuck your mouth, pretty girl? Blink once for no, twice for yes.” You moaned, looking up at him from under your lashes and pleading with your eyes, you blinked twice.

That is exactly what you wanted.

He chuckled quietly and then gave you a soft look.

“Have you ever had your mouth fucked before? Once for no, twice for yes.” You blinked once—you hadn’t and you were nervous because with his cock so deep in your throat you couldn’t breathe, you were also struggling not to gag—but you wanted him to do it so badly in that moment.

“Then listen closely, so I don’t hurt you.” He warned you, then caressed your neck tenderly. “Relax your throat, soften the back of your mouth.” He instructed gently. “Go ahead, I’ll tell you when you’ve done it right.” You tried to do as he asked, relaxing all the muscles in your throat and opening the back of your mouth. “Good girl, that’s perfect.”

Your head was starting to feel fuzzy from lack of oxygen, but you knew he wouldn’t hurt you so you didn’t panic.

“Keep your jaw loose and let me move you, don’t fight against me or try to help. It’ll make you sore if you do. You can’t breathe right now can you?” He asked, seemingly knowing the answer was no, but you blinked once anyway. “You are going to have to focus on your breathing. Time it so that you take a full inhale through your nose as I’m pulling out.”

He pulled you back off his cock just enough so that your airway was clear, you immediately sucked in a full breath and your head cleared.

“Good girl…” He soothed, stroking your cheek with the back of his finger. “When you take a breath, hold it. Then release it when I pull out the next time. Do you understand?”

You blinked twice.

“Perfect.”

He started so slowly—barely moving at all—letting you get the hang of how to breathe and how to keep everything loose and relaxed.

“That’s perfect, sweetheart, just like that.” He praised you after a minute, and then he slowly increased his pace, going a little deeper as well.

“Look how well she takes it…” Emily purred, kneeling down next to you and brushing a stray hair from your face. “Such a good girl…” She cooed, running her hand down your bare back.

Her words only served to fuel your ego and you preened under her praise.

“She’s a natural…” Hotch agreed and brought his free hand up to your cheek. “Think you can take it a little faster, pretty girl?” He asked, stroking your skin with his thumb.

You blinked twice.

“Good girl, remember to breathe in on every other one.” He both praised and reminded you softly as he picked up the pace. His cock was touching the back of your throat now with every inward thrust. His hand in your hair supported your head and held you completely still. You were like putty in his hands, and Hotch was reveling in it. He loved the way you completely surrendered and trusted him with something you’d never experienced before. “Fuck, Sweetheart… you’re taking me so well. I’m so proud of you.”

The tone of voice he was using—low and rough—was making your pussy throb all over again.

You moaned and he lost a little bit of his restraint, fucking into your mouth a little harder than he had been before, but not hard enough to hurt you. It was making your eyes water, however, and you had tears running down your cheeks. Hotch was enthralled by them, by the mascara tracks they were leaving and the way they changed the shade of your eyes slightly. “Such a good fucking girl, letting me fuck your mouth like this… you’re perfection, sweetheart.”

“Look at what you’re doing to him…” Emily whispered softly in your ear. “He’s barely holding on, you’re driving him crazy with those pouty, fuckable lips and pleading puppy dog eyes… you should see yourself the way he’s seeing you right now… you’re fucking beautiful baby.”

You moaned and it would’ve been loud and obscene if not for the cock in your mouth.

Hotch’s hips stuttered and he cursed, you knew that meant he was close.

“I’m about to come, pretty girl…” He gritted out, his hand in your hair tightening. “Can you take it?”

You moaned and blinked twice at him, then held eye contact. You didn’t know how you knew that would send him over the edge, you just did.

Then he was spilling himself down your throat, and you swallowed every fucking drop, then sucked him clean. He pulled his cock from your mouth and tucked it back into his briefs, then squatted down in front of you. The thumb of his free hand wiped a drop of liquid off your chin and he brought it to your lips, the look in his eyes almost challenging.

You licked his thumb from base to tip, then closed your lips around it and lightly sucked on it. He smiled at you then, pulling his thumb from your mouth and sliding that hand back to join his other in your hair. Hotch pulled you toward him gently as he started to lean in and murmured, “Such a good girl…”

The kiss he gave you was hot, sloppy and branding. He could taste himself in your mouth as his tongue invaded it and he was obsessed with the mingling of his flavor and yours. You moaned into his mouth and tried to deepen the kiss again, but he heard Spencer’s ragged breathing behind him and pulled back.

“You wanna ride Reid’s cock, Sweetheart?” He murmured loudly enough that Spencer also heard him and you both whimpered pathetically at the suggestion.

Hotch and Emily both chuckled, and then Hotch put his hands on your waist to help you stand and guided you over to the chair Spencer was in. Your legs were shaking and you were as clumsy as a baby giraffe stumbling over to him.

Spencer was looking up at you with those big amber puppy dog eyes and you felt even weaker in the knees, luckily you didn’t have to stand for much longer. Hotch steadied you on your wobbly legs until you climbed up onto Spencer’s lap, straddling him.

He was hesitant to touch you, his observation had started this whole thing and when he had suggested an experiment… he hadn’t expected it to end in sex…especially not group sex. When Hotch and Emily had started talking about consent and ground rules—lines that couldn’t be crossed— he had been sent reeling.

When he had asked if they’d noticed you acting strangely it had been out of concern for your wellbeing. When he had suggested they test the hypothesis he had merely meant to prove whether you were into men, women, or both.

He had wanted a scientific experiment, not sexual experimentation.

Not that he was complaining…

He, Emily, and Hotch were all three bisexual. Hotch didn’t really broadcast that fact, especially not in front of the others. Even though Spencer was pretty sure the only two on the team who weren’t queer were Rossi and Derek, and he wasn’t even sure about Rossi sometimes. So it wasn’t a big deal if you were or were not bisexual. He had only been curious.

Curiosity killed the cat or something like that… yet this time he had ended up with your bare pussy hovering over his cock, and he was not at all upset with this outcome. Just incredibly shocked. You were so beautiful, looking down at him with your tear stained cheeks and swollen lips. He still hesitated, however, because he wasn’t sure whether or not you really wanted him, or if he was being included simply because he was here.

You could see that hesitation, that self doubt in his eyes… you hated it.

So you leaned in and kissed him. It was a sweet kiss at first… reassuring and gentle. You were giving him plenty of time to work his nerve up. When he didn’t pull away—and even started to reciprocate—you deepened the kiss and teased at his lips with your tongue.

Requesting entry.

He parted his lips for you immediately, you smiled against him before you let your tongue caress his sinfully. His body was no longer rigid, but he was still tense. You moved to kissing his neck and nipping at his skin.

“Relax Spence…” You murmured sensually, running your hands through his hair and brushing it back from his forehead. “Let me lead, I’ll take care of you.” Pulling back and checking in to make sure, before you went too far, you looked him in the eyes, searching them intently. “Is this okay with you, Handsome?”

He nodded, biting his bottom lip in a way that made you want to bite it too.

“Yes.” He murmured, still hesitating… then whispered, “I just– I’ve only done this twice… I don’t know what to do in this position…”

Oh…

“That’s okay, I didn’t know what to do a minute ago and Hotch talked me right through it… We can do that for you, if you want?” You offered him gently. Your eyes were soft and kind, but let him see just how badly you wanted him. “Besides… I’ll enjoy being able to teach you something for once.”

He laughed softly, and some of the tension melted away from him.

“Okay.” He agreed. “Tell me what to do.”

Then in a burst of confidence, he reached up and tucked your hair behind your ear.

You hummed in approval.

“Touching me would be a great start.” You teased gently, not at all trying to bruise his ego.

“That’s true…” He joked quietly and his hands settled on your waist, then started to slowly trail up your sides. Lightly dancing over your ribs. “What if… I did this as well?”

And then his hands were reaching around to the clasp of your bra and deftly unhooking it. Which shocked you given his inexperience… you’d bet anything that he’d practiced somehow so he wouldn’t fumble when it mattered.

You reached down between your bodies and wrapped your hand around him. He sucked in a sharp gasp, jumping at the contact and your soft chuckle was echoed by two more behind you.

“Then I would do this and tell you that you have great instincts if you’ll just listen to them.” You started to slowly pump your hand up and down his length and he groaned. It was an almost tortured sound, as though you were both killing him and pleasuring him at the same time.

He slid the straps of your bra down your arms and you briefly let go of him to toss it to the floor. You sat up a little straighter as he took in the sight of you, sitting astride him in nothing but a garter belt and thigh-high stockings.

“You’re so beautiful, Angel…” he murmured, then leaned forward and pressed kisses to your breasts.

You lost patience then.

“Are you ready?” You asked him as you lined him up with your entrance, barely putting the tip in.

Your hands were trembling and your breathing was rapid and shaky.

“Aren’t I supposed to be the one who asks you that?” He responded, but his voice cracked and you knew he was putting on bravado. He was every bit as desperate as you, his breaths ragged and harsh.

“Spence…” You whimpered, needing his permission to sink down on it. “Please.”

He didn’t respond, instead he gripped your hips firmly and tugged you down onto his cock until you were fully seated on it. You swore you could feel every ridge, every vein, and every little twitch it made.

“Fuck!” You moaned, loudly, earning snickers and snorts from the two voyeurs sitting on the couch behind you.

“Shit, sorry! Did I hurt you?” He panicked.

“That was definitely not a sound of pain, Reid.” Hotch murmured.

Spencer looked at you closely anyway, unsure if you were alright.

“You told me to follow my instincts so I–”

You kissed him, to shut him up and stop his doubts from running away with his head. Then you started to ride him slowly. He groaned against your lips and you smiled. The feel of him—filling you up—was exquisite.

“Your instincts are perfect Spencer…” You praised him, letting your hands drift back into his hair. “That was hot.”

His beautiful eyes gazing up at you as you rode him made you feel a little dizzy, he was so fucking pretty. He was gripping your hips tightly and every time you brought them back down he whimpered. The sounds he was making were driving you insane.

“Tilt your hips forward a bit more, sweetheart.” Hotch instructed you, his voice low and raspy. “It’ll help you take him deeper, and feel twice as good for him.”

He was right, and you did know that already, but it was so fucking sexy when he started giving orders.

“And for her.” Prentiss added, you could hear the salacious smile in her tone.

“Like this?” You asked in a faux bashful tone, as if you didn’t know how to do it. Then you did it perfectly, so that you and Reid both groaned, and your ass popped back enticingly for Hotch and Emily.

They both groaned softly and you smiled, winking at Spencer. Letting him in on your antics. He smiled back at you, as amused as he could be—given the circumstances.

“What about this? Do you think this would make him feel good?” You asked, rolling and circling your hips seductively as you rode him.

Spencer hissed out a breath, his eyes rolling back briefly.

“I can confirm that it does in fact feel amazing.” He groaned, you giggled and threw a flirty glance back over your shoulder at the others. Then leaned forward and sucked Spencer’s bottom lip into your mouth, biting it. He slid his hands down to your thighs squeezing tightly, then over your thighs where he looped his fingers into your stockings and peeled them down your legs, tossing them to the floor. Then traced his fingers back up your calves and thighs, back to your hips and you noticed he was avoiding your ass… So did Prentiss.

You felt the heat of her body behind you before you heard her voice, and pulled back to look up at her.

“Don’t be shy Reid…” She purred, her hands landing on his, dragging them back till they rested fully on your ass. “Get a good handful… or two.” She made him squeeze you firmly. You moaned and Emily chuckled. “See… She loves that, don’t you babe?”

“Yes!” You moaned wantonly, and caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of your eye. Hotch had moved closer and was perched on the edge of the table next to the seat you and Spencer were in. He was watching with a ravenous hunger in his eyes.

“Put her nipple in your mouth, Reid.” He said after a moment. “Suck on it while circling your tongue around it.”

Emily hummed her approval, they were giving Spencer a veritable textbook for How To Make You Come 101. Spencer listened, of course. He’d just watched Hotch and Emily tag team you into an orgasm, their words were as good as gold.

When his lips closed around your nipple you hissed and whimpered a little, picking up your pace as you bounced up and down on his cock. Hotch chuckled in lust filled amusement, reaching over and stroking your ribs with the back of his hand.

“She makes such beautiful little sounds.” He mused to Emily, who nodded and then grabbed a handful of your hair.

She used it to tip your head back then kissed you thoroughly, her tongue caressing yours and you could still taste your pussy on her lips. You moaned and ground yourself down against Spencer, his cock reaching all the way to your cervix, you felt as though you could feel him in your stomach.

Hotch’s fingers were tracing your ribs, or maybe that was Spencer? No, his hands were still on your ass so it had to be Hotch or Emily. Someone was trailing a hand down your stomach to where your body joined with Spencer’s, this hand was larger and callused while the other was soft and smaller. So Emily was tracing your ribs, while Hotch…

Hotch was on a collision course with your clit. You knew when he made impact, you’d see stars.

Spencer switched nipples, still kneading your ass with firmness and your muscles were starting to ache from pulling yourself up and down his cock at this pace. Emily was still lighting you up with her kiss, her fingers traveling down the line of your rib to the breast that Reid had started with. Hotch’s fingers were getting closer and closer, but they were moving so slowly you knew he was trying to drive you wild with anticipation.

It was working.

Your chest was heaving, you were trembling and your legs were aching deliciously from exertion. Spencer’s cock was hitting you perfectly every time you sank down on it. All the sensations combined were almost too much for your sanity. You were so close, again.

“Look at you, falling apart at the seams… you’re so close aren’t you sweetheart?” Hotch murmured, his voice a lot closer than it had last been. What was he, a mind reader? His nose skimmed your neck up to your ear, which he then bit gently. You moaned into Emily’s mouth, a pitiful little whimper, and you felt her smile softly against your lips. “Does Reid’s cock feel so good? Filling you up like that. Stretching you out. I wonder, can you still taste yourself on Emily’s lips? Do you know how good you taste, pretty girl?”

Fuck, was he trying to kill you?

It was like his voice had gained a solid form and had wrapped itself around your throat, cutting off your oxygen and leaving you completely breathless. Your senses were overwhelmed, in a state of near euphoria, and you knew that once Hotch’s fingers reached their destination—and they would in the next three seconds—that the barest graze of them was going to make you explode.

He stopped just short of his target. You whined against Emily’s lips and he laughed at you softly.

“I think she ought to earn this one… What do you think, Prentiss? Should we make her beg?” Hotch asked the other woman, he didn’t ask Reid because the poor man was barely holding it together and all of his focus was split between the nipple he was currently stimulating and not coming inside you without consent.

Emily—reluctantly—pulled her tongue out of your mouth and smirked down at you.

“Hmm, she was being a little bit of a tease a minute ago wasn’t she?” She made a show of looking very contemplative, all the while she continued toying with your other nipple. “Reid?”

She brought Spencer into the conversation—or she tried to.

“Busy.” He murmured against the skin of your breast as he continued his work there, he would not be distracted. You glanced down and saw that he had started marking your skin with hickeys.

You moaned at the sight and let your head fall back.

“You want me to beg, and I’ll beg. Just please don’t make him stop.” Your voice was heavy, rough and breathless. You were so incredibly close, your body was starting to shake, and you knew you’d come, whether they kept touching you or not.

They knew it too, but they also knew they could make it so much stronger… if you were good for them.

“It feels so good, huh, sweetheart?” Hotch asked, his tone slightly condescending. “If you ask nicely, we’ll give you what you need…”

His hand was still stalled on your lower abdomen less than an inch away from your clit. Emily was just barely teasing your nipple and while it seemed like Spencer was ignoring them, you knew he was giving you just enough to keep you on the edge. Sneaky.

However, you expected no less from him. He was a fast and visual learner, he had been watching closely when Hotch and Emily had been playing you like a fiddle. He could have had you screaming all on his own if he’d wanted to—you had no doubt about that— he’d just needed the confidence to get started.

Hotch and Emily had helped with that.

“I’ll be such a good girl if you let me come, Hotch, please…” You gave him the sexiest pout you could muster. His eyes seemed to darken—his hazel irises almost completely drowned out by his pupils—as they zoned in on your lips. “I’ll mind my manners and be so polite, I promise. Pretty please, make me come.”

Hotch was listening, and he had intended to make you beg more than this, but your lipstick smudged lips were just so alluring that he couldn’t focus on anything else at that moment. Remembering what they’d looked like wrapped around his cock several minutes earlier, he found his will rapidly dissolving, and all he really wanted was to watch the way those lips formed a perfect O when you came.

“I knew you’d sound so sweet begging…” He murmured, and his hand started to move again “Let us hear you, pretty girl. Loud and clear.”

“Yes sir.” You murmured confidently.

Emily chuckled and started sucking on your neck, you moaned… Then Hotch’s fingers—finally—found your clit.

You screamed.

Your vision went fuzzy and then white. Your head was buzzing and your body was nearly numb. You went limp and Spencer took over, fucking you through your orgasm, prolonging it. Emily’s hand had begun rubbing soothing circles on your back.

“Good girl…” She cooed. “You look so pretty when you come.”

“Yes she does.” Hotch murmured, reaching over to where your head was resting on Spencer’s shoulder and brushing your hair away from your face. “So fucking pretty.”

You whimpered softly at the touch and he smiled tenderly at you. Your chest was heaving with hard-fought, ragged breaths. You were shaking, but your vision was slowly returning to normal.

“Are you alright?” Spencer whispered gently in your ear. His hands on your waist now, thumbs rubbing circles on your hips. “You’re shaking.”

“I’m fucking fantastic, Spence…” You murmured in return, shifting your weight slightly to sit up and kiss him. He squeezed your hips tightly.

“Please don’t move.” He hissed, pleadingly. “I can’t… I’m gonna… If you don’t get off it, I’m going to come inside you. I’m sorry, I can’t help it.”

You froze, your lips just a centimeter from his.

“It’s okay… Don’t panic… They make pills for that, and I intend to take one anyway… I’m a little stuck at the moment though, my knees are too weak to get up.” You met his eyes, the panic in them was astounding. “Hotch, could you–”

The man's arms were already coming around your waist and he lifted you off of Spencer effortlessly, as the younger man bit his lip and hissed as if pained. Setting you on your feet softly, Hotch held you to his chest to keep you from falling to the floor.

“Didn’t you say you’d mind your manners and be polite if we let you come?” He asked, a hint of mischief in his voice.

You looked up at him, searching his eyes for a hint, a clue, anything to tell you what he was up to.

“Mm hmm…” You hummed in response, nodding at him.

“You made a mess Sweetheart…” He told you quietly, then took your chin in his hand and turned your face down to look at Spencer… Who was, in fact, a whimpering mess. “Clean it up.”

You licked your lips and smiled salaciously.

“Yes sir.” You murmured softly and got down on your knees at Spencer’s feet.

Reaching out and taking Spencer’s cock in your hand, you gave him a firm stroke. He moaned and his head fell back against the seat. So he didn’t see you coming when you lowered your head and took him in your mouth, all the way to the base.

“Oh fuck!” He yelped, you hummed in approval at his reaction, then you pulled back so that a manageable length was in your mouth. You put one hand on his thigh to brace yourself and create a little leverage, the other you wrapped around the rest of him. Slowly, you started to bob up and down, moving your hand in time with your head. Out of the corner of your eye you saw Spencer’s hands gripping the arms of the chair, his knuckles were white. That only spurred you on.

The taste of yourself on his cock was tantalizing, the tang of you mingling with the musk of him was something you never thought you would experience. This whole situation was something you never thought you’d experience. You’d considered it of course—more times than you could count— but it was only a fantasy, a daydream. Never had you once thought it might actually happen.

“She’s doing so well… don’t you think Hotch?” Emily’s voice purred on your right.

“Hmmm, I don’t know… she’s capable of more…” He hummed in response from the left, and a hand—that based on the size could only be his—palmed the curve of your ass. He gave it a squeeze and a playful smack and you moaned around Spence's cock. Spencer twitched in response.

“You think she can take more?” Emily asked him, her tone was nothing short of sinful and it made you shiver. Hotch’s following chuckle, however, went straight to your pussy, making you squeeze your thighs together. Suddenly, you were completely desperate again..

“I know she can.” He answered, with a confidence that made your toes curl. His voice tended to do that to you, but when he put that cocky, self assured, arrogant rasp behind it… Goddamn. It was the voice he used when he knew he had the upper hand, when he had an unsub completely caught up in a lie, a trap of their own making. The voice that made your knees weak and your thighs tighten. It went straight to your pussy every time, making it clench around nothing. “Why don’t you help her along?”

“I’d love to.” She purred.

Then Emily’s hand was in your hair, resting firmly on the back of your head.

“You heard him, Gorgeous…” she lilted provocatively as her hand grew heavier on your head, slowly pushing you down the lengthy expanse of Spencer’s cock, until your nose was touching the neat patch of hair at his base.

“Fuck, Angel…” Spencer groaned, his voice husky and strained. “I’m so close…”

You gave him a muffled little hum of approval and that was all he needed to fall over the edge. Spilling down your throat as he moaned loudly, his hands joined Emily’s in your hair and he held you there firmly until he was finished.

You swallowed as much as you could and then—when they released your head—you sucked and licked him clean.

“Thank you, Angel. That was… incredible.” Spencer murmured, reaching up to stroke your cheek tenderly with the back of his forefinger. You leaned into the touch and then gave him a sensuous smile as you climbed back up into his lap. You brought your lips to his before he could say another word and kissed him deeply, letting him taste the mixture of all the flavors that had accumulated on your tongue. It was by far the sweetest thing you’d ever tasted. He moaned into your mouth and you pulled back to smile at him.

“You are very. Very. Welcome.” You purred, punctuating each very with a gentle kiss and biting his bottom lip after welcome. “It was my pleasure…”

Hotch and Emily chuckled softly at your antics and you noticed that Em sounded a bit shaky. Then you realized she was the only one who hadn’t come at least once… you’d have to remedy that.

Hotch—astute as ever—immediately noticed when your eyes locked onto Emily’s form. He chuckled again, looking between you and her, then stood and helped her to her feet as well, guiding her to the space between you and the couch you both had started this whole thing on.

“You want Prentiss again, sweetheart?” He asked, his smirk letting you know he knew exactly what was on your mind. You simply nodded your head, never taking your eyes off her. “Hmm… What do you think, Emily? Has she earned the right to touch you yet?”

She smirked down at you, trying to maintain her slightly condescending attitude… but you could read her like a book, and she was so turned on she was struggling to breathe regularly. You smirked back at her and she raised a brow at you.

“I don’t know, she seems a little too cocky about it to me.” She answered him, only prolonging her own discomfort.

“Am I?” You murmured, giving her a teasing smile. “Take it from the boys, Em. I could rock your world…”

She laughed softly.

“I bet you could, but I wanna hear you beg for it…” She purred, grinning at you. “Tell me how much you want it.”

You started to get up and reach for her, to show her how much you wanted her… but she stepped back, bumping into Hotch’s chest. He steadied her without hesitation, his hands stayed planted firmly on her hips and to your surprise, Spencer gripped your own hips. Tugging you back down into his lap so that you now faced the others, he held you in place.

“She said tell her, Angel…” Spencer murmured, his breath tickling your ear. You were shocked at his sudden burst of dominance. Your eyes widened slightly and your lips parted in surprise.

Hotch chuckled and you studied the three of them carefully… they were all smiling at you, their eyes holding the same teasing light. It was as though they were waiting for you to notice something. You just didn’t know what.

“You don’t get to touch her yet, sweetheart… not until she gives you permission.” Hotch murmured teasingly. “You can look though…”

Then his hands slid around her waist to the front of her pants, and he began to unbuckle her belt.

“Oh fuck…” you whispered on a breathy sigh. This would be the death of you, you were sure. Your head tipped back as you looked to the ceiling, as though praying for patience or guidance—or perhaps salvation because you felt certifiably damned—but Spencer had other ideas.

“Don’t look away.” He instructed you, his voice low and commanding as he gripped your chin and made you look back at them. You’d never heard him speak with so much authority, and yet somehow it was still so soft that it was barely audible. “They’re doing this for you…”

Hotch continued his mission to rid Emily of her slacks by unbuttoning and then unzipping them. Then he slipped them down her legs and held her hand to steady her as she stepped out of them. She kept her heels on, now standing before you in just her button down blouse and undershirt.

Your brain was short circuiting.

“Please, Em… I need to touch you.” You murmured softly and she smirked at you, scarlet lips tipping up to one side.

“Not yet…” She taunted.

Hotch reached around her again and started to unbutton her blouse, his pace was agonizing. You noticed that he was careful not to touch her body at all, now that she was only half clothed, and his eyes were locked on you… not her.

They really were doing this just for you.

How they knew you’d find it hot to watch him undress her, you didn’t know, but it was working. They didn’t seem uncomfortable, no… they were enjoying themselves as they teased you mercilessly.

When he slid the blouse down her shoulders and it fell to the floor, you felt as though you couldn’t breathe. She was wearing that one red tank top that always made you drool.

“Emily…” you nearly whimpered. “Please…”

She looked smug as she shook her head, reveling in the shakiness of your voice. She knew what that tank top did to you…

“Do you want to see him take it off me?” She asked, sweet as sugar… in a saccharine kind of way.

“I’d rather do it myself…” you implored, giving her a pouty look.

Her breath hitched and you knew… you were going to win this one.

“But if I’m being totally honest… I have this… fantasy… of you, in this exact outfit. I want you just like this, you’ve always looked so sexy in red, Em.” You purred, and you can tell you’ve surprised her for once. She was speechless for a moment and Hotch smirked at you, his eyes showing his amusement at this little standoff between you and Emily. “You know you want me Emily… just give in.”

You licked your bottom lip subtly, then bit it, trying to tempt her by looking up at her as innocent as a lamb. She had spotted your ploy a mile away, seen it coming from the moment you said she looked sexy in red.

It still worked.

“I will.” She drawled sensually, her eyes tracing your body. “If you get on your hands and knees and crawl to me.”

She stepped away from Hotch and sat on the couch with her legs spread wide, revealing red lace panties that matched her red tank top.

“Fuck…” you breathed. “You win… you win Em… just… God, let me touch you… please.” You pleaded. “I fucking need you.”

“Crawl to me, Gorgeous.” She finally conceded, smiling at you triumphantly.

And you let her think she had the upper hand, as you slipped out of Spencer’s lap and to the floor, but you knew once you got your hands on her—your mouth on her—she’d be putty in them.

Hotch moved to Spencer’s side and leaned against the wall—to watch the show of course—and nodded at you encouragingly.

You took your time, crawling seductively across the cabin to her, using every inch of the space to taunt her. She devoured you with her eyes and when you got to her feet, picked her right one up and propped it on your shoulder. You planted soft kisses on the inside of her ankle, never breaking eye contact.

“I have dreams that start out just like this…” you murmured to her.

“So do I.” She admitted, her voice breathless and shaky.

“Mmm…” you hummed softly, then purred, “Then what happens?”

She laughed softly, trying to seem unaffected again, but it was much too late for that. You knew exactly what you were doing to her.

“What’s the matter, Em?” You teased, beginning to kiss your way up the inside of her leg. “Cat got your tongue?” She seemed to lose all semblance of composure and you giggled softly against her soft skin. “Don’t worry… I can figure it out. I’m very creative.”

The roles had been reversed, and you’d never felt more in control than in that moment, kneeling between her legs. You slid your hands up her thighs and around her hips, gripping her ass firmly and then pulled her to the edge of the couch in one smooth motion.

For better access of course.

She yelped in surprise and you chuckled against her skin, never checking up as you continued kissing your way up her leg. You’d made it to her inner thigh and she was trembling. You looked up at her from under your lashes and smirked.

“I like it when you’re vocal.” You teased her, repeating her words back to her and earning a soft laugh from Hotch in return.

Emily started to say something but you flatten your tongue against her pussy—through her panties—and she moaned instead.

You hummed at the sound, reveling in it and lapped at her clit enthusiastically. Not bothering to tease her at all, just diving right in—to shut her up and wipe the smug smile off her gorgeous lips—and showing her exactly how creative you could be with your tongue.

But that didn’t satisfy your hunger for her at all, no… you needed to taste her, without the lace that was currently barring you from doing it.

You gently moved her panties to the side and took in the sight of her, bare and wet—absolutely soaked—all for you.

“Oh Emily…” You purred. “You’re dripping for me… and such a pretty pussy too. I wonder if it tastes as delicious as it looks?”

You were dying for her to regain a little sentience.

Docile, desperately horny Em was cute… but you wanted her sassy, confident self to come back out to play. You puffed a hot, teasing breath over the supple skin of her pussy and slowly, so slowly, licked her from her slit all the way to her clit. You stopped just short of it though, teasing her entrance with your tongue instead.

“Stop teasing me before I change my mind.” She growled impatiently, her hand tangling in your hair and tipping your head back to make eye contact.

You smirked up at her, a bit defiantly, and said softly, “Ask me nicely…”

Her eyes narrowed slightly and her head tilted to the side just a fraction as she stared you down, she seemed to be contemplating her options here. She could either let you get away with that and actually say please, or she could do whatever just crossed her mind and made those beautiful onyx eyes flicker with heat.

“Please, stop teasing me.” She murmured softly, leaning down so that her lips brushed your cheek as she moved to whisper in your ear. “Or I will take care of this pretty pussy all by myself, and make you watch from Spencer’s lap.”

You chuckled, biting your bottom lip as you turned your head to look at her.

“Mmm, I love it when you’re bossy.” You murmured, your nose less than an inch from hers now.

“Do you?” She purred, leaning closer so her lips are hovering just over yours, sharing your every breath. You nodded, yes, and she grinned salaciously at you, moving closer so she could bite your bottom lip herself. “Then stop talking, and do something useful with that silver tongue instead.”

You felt your cheeks heat, whether it was embarrassment or arousal—or a mix of both—you weren’t certain. But you loved the way it felt.

“Yes ma’am.” You purred, your voice dripping with pure seduction.

You felt her hand vacate your hair and didn’t waste time. Leaning forward, you licked her cunt from bottom to top in one smooth motion. Your tongue—finally—delving in to taste her, before you buried yourself between her thighs and ate her pussy like you were starving. She was delectable. Her arousal like honey on your tongue, and she just kept getting wetter.

The more you explored and experimented with her, the more you learned.

For instance, if you suctioned your lips tightly around her clit and rolled your tongue in circles around it, she couldn’t help but squirm as she let out soft little moans. If you added two fingers, curling just slightly upwards, and used them to massage that spot—just past the ridge of her pubic bone—she bucked against you wildly. So you gripped her by her thighs and hoisted them up onto your shoulders, forcing her to lean back on the couch and spread herself wider for you. The new angle gave you more leverage with your fingers and allowed you to apply firmer pressure with your tongue.

She was putty in your hands, just as you knew she would be. Her ragged breaths and quiet whimpers were growing more and more desperate, her hands grappling for purchase on any part of you she could reach. You were unsurprised when they found your hair, threading into it and taking two fistfuls that had your scalp stinging delightfully. You moaned against her and then felt her walls start to flutter around your fingers.

“Don’t stop, don’t change anything, I’m so close!” She panted, her voice raw with desire.

You suppressed the urge to grin, needing to maintain the seal of your lips around her clit, the pressure of your tongue… but you couldn’t help feeling a little smug. Especially as she clamped down hard on your fingers, her thighs quivering and trying to close around your head. Her entire body went taunt, her back arching and her head falling back against the couch as she cried out, “Oh God!”

Only when her body fully relaxed and her grip loosened in your hair, did you allow yourself to smirk against her pussy and look up at her from under your lashes. She didn’t notice—too busy recovering from the mind blowing head you’d just given her—Hotch, however, did.

“Look at you, being all smug.” His voice ran up your spine like molten lava. You didn’t dare peek over at him, choosing instead to pepper Emily’s fevered skin with soft, barely there kisses. First over her inner thighs, then her lower stomach where her tank had ridden up nearly to her breasts. “Are you proud of yourself, Pretty Girl?”

Hotch’s hand perched softly at the nape of your neck, he squeezed gently but firmly. His hand slid down your back slowly, his finger slipping into your garter belt—the only item of clothing left on you—and snapping the elastic against your spine. You moaned softly at the sting and he chuckled softly. He began to guide the belt down your hips, over your ass and thighs, to your knees. Tapping each in silent command. You complied, lifting them one at a time so he could—finally—strip you completely bare. “Such a good girl…”

His murmured praise had you aching again as you continued your worshipful path of kisses up the plain of Emily’s belly. Not stopping when you reached her tank, instead starting to lift it over her head with her willing assistance. You tossed it to the floor and pushed her gently to her back, so that she was lying along the length of the couch. Climbing to settle between her legs again, you began to kiss her chest. Propping yourself up with one hand, you used the other to free her breasts from the cups of her bra, which—conveniently— clipped in the front. She moaned softly as your lips closed around one nipple and your free hand toyed with the other.

Warm breath on your pussy made it clench around nothing. Which made you keenly aware of the fact that you’d left your ass high in the air—and completely exposed. Strong hands gripped it firmly and tilted it up even further, positioning you exactly how their owner desired. “Stay just like this Sweetheart. I want to taste you while you take care of Emily.”

You moaned wantonly at Hotch’s order, spreading your legs a bit more for him. He smacked your ass, just hard enough to make a point. “I said stay still.”

“Yes sir.” You murmured seductively around Emily’s breast and he soothed the sting with a gentle kiss to the spot, just before he buried his face in your pussy. Groaning as he tasted you first hand, he gripped your ass with bruising strength and made you whine. “Fuck…”

He chuckled quietly to himself, his hand traveling down your ass and in between your legs. It wasted no time in finding its target. Your clit. He circled it so lightly, as though he thought it was delicate enough that any firmer touch would damage it.

The effect was maddening.

Emily’s hands found your breasts, toying with your nipples and bringing your attention partially back to her. You trailed your free hand down her stomach, finding her clit again with ease and began to move your finger over it ever so lightly. She whined quietly, and pressed up into your hand with her hips in a wordless request for more pressure.

“You need more, Em?” You asked softly, teasingly, as you kissed your way across her chest, up her neck, nipping her ear and finally hovered over her lips. “Hmm? Do you wanna taste yourself on my lips?”

“Shut up and kiss me.” She demanded, her hand wrapping around the back of your neck and tangling into your hair as she tugged you down to her lips.

The kiss was rough, frantic and heated. Emily was still grinding up into your hand—desperate for friction—so you had mercy and increased the pressure and speed of your hand.

Hotch’s tongue was still leisurely fucking into your pussy as his finger work your clit with precision. He kept making these self satisfied little groans in the back of his throat that were driving you crazy.

And then two more hands were touching you… Hotch’s hands were still on your ass and clit, Emily’s in your hair and toying with your breast…

But Spencer…

He’d been content to watch for a few minutes, but he couldn’t help himself any longer, he had to touch you.

He was tracing the lines of your ribs with one hand and your spine with the other, his touch light and inquisitive. You’d fantasized about him doing exactly this and you’d been right, it felt amazing. His hands on your skin anywhere would have been heavenly, but the way he was following each rib intentionally—reverently—reminded you of the way he traced each line when he was reading a book, the way his fingers skimmed over each vertebrae was making your back arch.

You pulled away from Emily to look up at him.

There was such adoration in his eyes as he studied the expanse of your skin. The hand at your ribs, going up to your shoulder blades and your collar bones. The one at your spine trailing down to the curve of your hip, over the rise of your ass and down the back of your thigh.

“Focus on Emily, Angel…” He murmured softly. “I just wanna touch you.”

You would do anything to have him keep touching you like that, so you redoubled your efforts on Emily. Sliding your fingers down from her clit to her cunt and slipping the middle two inside of her.

She moaned and you silenced it with a kiss, parting her lips with your tongue.

You rubbed her clit with your thumb while you worked her g-spot with the pads of your fingers and she started to squirm. She tried to close her legs but your knees were in the way and her thighs started to tremble.

“Give it to me, Emily…” You coaxed into her mouth, then bit her lip gently. “Let me have it, you can do it… come for me one more time…”

Her head fell back against the couch, so you dipped yours down and drew her nipple into your mouth, rolling it with your tongue. It was just enough to send her spiraling for the second time. A breathy cry falling from her lips as her pussy spasmed around your fingers.

All the stimulation—Hotch’s tongue and fingers, Emily’s cunt clenching around your fingers and her hands pulling your hair and squeezing your breast, and Spencer’s exploration of everywhere else—was nearly too much.

And then Hotch slipped two fingers inside of you… much thicker than Emily’s slender ones, and when he added a third… It was thicker that Spencer’s cock had been. Not as long, but with what he was doing… length didn’t matter.

You came hard. Your pussy clamping down on Hotch’s fingers so tightly you thought you could feel each knuckle and every callus. Your brain went completely offline and your thighs shook violently as your release ran down them.

Your knees gave out, and you collapsed against Emily with a moan. Your vision blurred as tears filled your eyes. You laid there unable to move for several moments. Emily wasn’t moving either–except for her chest, which was heaving as she panted for air—so you were in no hurry to go anywhere. You gently slipped your fingers out of her and pressed a kiss to the side of her neck.

“Holy–” She gasped.

“--fuck!” You finished for her on a hard fought breath.

Spencer snickered softly as he stepped back to observe the mess of limbs the two of you were tangled up in.

Hotch chose that moment to pull his fingers out of you—making you flinch and whine—and then he moved to lean against the table adjacent to the couch to watch you and Emily untangle yourselves.

“You good, gorgeous?” Emily murmured after a moment, her hand running through your hair affectionately.

You nuzzled into her neck, nipping at her throat playfully.

“I’m great, Em.” You purred, twirling her hair around your finger and then giggled, “Why? You wanna go again?”

“Do you?” Hotch’s voice pulled your attention from the way the overhead light caught in Emily’s hair.

You looked up at him, and found him staring down at you with heated eyes…

And a bulge in his pants.

You swallowed thickly, the amount of times you’d thought about fucking Aaron Hotchner…

Your mouth was suddenly dry and your tongue felt heavy and you didn’t think you’d be able to say anything if you tried.

So you nodded your head, yes.

“Come here.” He murmured, his voice low and rough.

You gently untangled yourself from Emily—dropping one more kiss to her lips as you went—and she propped herself up on her elbows to watch you go.

The three steps it took for you to reach him were the longest three steps of your life. When you came to stop in front of him he wasted no time.

He held the back of your neck and drew you in, gently but firmly, then kissed you.

You could feel the tension in the plain of his chest, the barely restrained strength of his grip, and the quiet urgency with which he kissed your lips.

He was desperate… but he didn’t want to be rough with you…

Which would have been sweet…

If that wasn’t exactly what you wanted.

You bit his lip, tugging it between your teeth and then licking into his mouth like you needed to taste him as much as you needed oxygen. Then you slipped your hand down and gave his cock a firm squeeze through his slacks.

He groaned and pulled you back to look at you, his eyes searching yours.

“Fuck me, like you own me.” You murmured, with much more confidence than you felt.

You saw in his eyes the exact moment his restraint snapped. It was like his whole demeanor did an about face.

The soft spoken, gentle—though slightly condescending and bossy—man that had been treating you with such tenderness and care…

He was gone.

You barely registered the movement, one moment you were standing up, asking him to fuck you…

And the next…

You were bent over the table he’d just been leaning on.

The sound of his zipper coming down made you clench around emptiness and then his hand was firmly planted in the center of your back. Holding you down on the table with an easy strength.

You felt the hard warmth of his cock at your entrance as he lined himself up, but he paused.

“You asked me to fuck you like I own you… are you sure you want that?” He asked again for consent. “I won’t be gentle.”

“I don’t want you to be gentle.” You said clearly, with a surety in your tone that he could not mistake for anything but affirmation. “I just want you to fuck me.”

He didn’t answer you verbally.

Just slid his cock inside you, all the way to the base.

You cried out—hands clutching the edges of the table—-at the shock of it. You’d thought—surely—after coming three times, that you would be good and ready for him.

But he was… thick.

You couldn’t breathe, your lungs had ceased to function the moment he slid home.

Thicker than Spencer had been by a bit—though not as long—and you’d known that since you’d had both of them in your mouth. The way he was stretching you out though, it burned, it was a good burn… but you needed a moment to adjust.

He seemed to know that instinctually, and while he said he wouldn’t be gentle, he wasn’t going to hurt you purposefully either.

So as he bottomed out inside you he gave you a moment to sit with it.

“Breathe.” His voice was commanding, but strained.

You took a deep breath and he felt his hand on your back rise as your chest filled with air.

The burning eased, and you relaxed against the table.

“Good girl…” He murmured and then he started to move.

The stretch was amazing, the way he filled you up had your back arching and your hands white knuckling the table. Then he started to pick up the pace, his thrusts long and deep. Pulling almost completely out of you and then going so deep you saw spots.

You pushed back into him, trying to take him deeper—if that was even possible—urging him to go faster, harder. You wanted to feel him in your diaphragm—you knew that wasn’t possible, but you didn’t particularly care—wanted him slamming into you. Over and over and over…

He grabbed your wrists, pulling them behind your back and holding them in one hand while the other went back to your waist, with a bruising grip. Taking away every bit of leverage you had and giving himself total control of your body.

Then he pounded into you, hard and fast until your hips were bashing up against the table.

You didn’t even notice, because his cock was hitting you so perfectly with every sharp thrust.

“Hotch!” You keened his name, the loudest sound you’d made all night.

“Mmm keep talking to me, pretty girl, I love the way your voice sounds screaming my name.” His own voice sounded different from anything you’d ever heard from him. It was carnal and lust filled, and it had you clenching around him. “Fuck, if you keep squeezing me like that this isn’t gonna last very long, sweetheart.”

You could only moan in response.

There were hands in your hair, gathering it out of your face.

You hadn’t realized you’d closed your eyes, but when you opened them, Emily and Spencer were sitting side by side at the table you were bent over.

“She’s too quiet…” Emily purred, a truly wicked gleam in her eyes. “I don’t think you’re fucking her hard enough.”

Hotch chuckled, the sound ran up your spine and down your limbs until your whole body tingled.

“You think she can take it?” He asked her in return.

But it was Spencer who leaned down, his lips skimming your cheek as he murmured, “You can take it, can’t you Angel?”

“God yes!” You panted, trying to look back at Hotch, though it was nearly impossible to move at all with the way he was pinning you to the table. “I can take it!”

He pushed you back down flat on the table.

“You want it harder, Pretty Girl?” He asked and there was something in his tone… something lethal.

“Yes! Please!” You sobbed.

“Tell me how bad you want it, make it pretty for me sweetheart… I wanna hear you beg.” His grip on your waist got impossibly tighter.

“I don’t want it, I need it! It feels so good, Hotch, please! I’ll be so good! I’ll lie here and take it like a good girl! Just fuck me harder, please!” You pleaded, your voice cracking as he continued to fuck into you. “I need to feel you deeper!”

He groaned, letting go of your arms and taking ahold of your hair instead.

“God, I love to hear you beg…” He growled, pulling your head back so he could lean forward and whisper in your ear. “Hold on to the table, pretty girl. You’re gonna need it.”

You gripped the sides of the table as hard as you could, bracing yourself against it.

He railed into you so hard you couldn’t remember your own name, your hips slamming into the table. His balls were slapping your clit loud enough to be heard over the sound of your cries, which were spilling from your lips with every thrust.

They were unintelligible.

Not even you knew what you were saying, but it was clear what you meant.

Don’t. Fucking. Stop.

“Fuck, she looks so beautiful like this…” Emily groaned to Spencer. “Look at her.”

“I see her… she’s fucking perfect.” Spencer replied. “Watch, she’s getting close… she makes that face every time, right before she comes.”

You were, you were so wrapped up in the moment you hadn’t even felt it creeping up on you until he brought it to your attention.

“I can feel her pussy fluttering… fuck, she’s getting tighter.” Hotch sounded nearly pained. “Come on, sweetheart, let me have it. I wanna feel you come on my cock.”

Emily reached under the table and pressed on your clit.

Your vision went white, a dull roar—like the ocean—filled your ears, your knees buckled and only the table and Hotch’s grip kept you from hitting the floor.

Your throat burned, and you knew you must’ve screamed, but you couldn’t hear a thing.

Both his hands were on your hips now, squeezing like his life depended on, anchoring you firmly to himself.

And it was a good thing too, because you thought that otherwise you might’ve floated away.

Your body was numb, gravity meant nothing to you, neither did time, or space.

Just his hands on your hips and his cock still slamming into your pussy as he fucked you through it.

Your hearing was the first sense to return to you, and you thanked the universe and every deity you knew of—just to cover all your bases—that it did.

Because the sound of Aaron Hotchner coming was something you wanted branded into your memory.

“Fuck! Such a good girl, just like that baby!” He moaned, “You feel like heaven pretty girl! I’m- God- I’m about to come—“

He pulled out of you so abruptly that you whined at the loss.

But then there were warm, wet ropes landing on your back.

You moaned, you wished you could see it, though feeling it was something you’d never forget.

“Fuck.” Hotch panted, then patted your ass gently. “You did so good for me sweetheart. That was…”

You couldn’t seem to speak yet, and your vision was still fuzzy. Your limbs weren’t yet back under your control either. So you just laid there, panting.

“Angel, are you okay?” You heard Spencer’s sweet voice murmur, you could feel his lips near your ear.

And Emily’s hand in your hair, nails brushing against your scalp soothingly.

Hotch was stroking your thigh tenderly.

Then the strangest thing happened… you started to giggle… you couldn’t help it… nothing was funny.

You were just… happy?

Overwhelmed?

Incandescent?

“Is she laughing?” Hotch asked, confusion evident in his tone.

“It would seem so…” Spencer murmured. “I think—you might have broken her.”

“No…” Emily murmured, stroking your cheek, wiping away an errant tear. “She just needs a minute, she’s euphoric.”

There! That was the word you’d been looking for! Thank you Emily, you beautiful, sexy, sapphic goddess!

“I’m gonna get something to clean her up,” you heard Hotch murmur, “I’ll be right back.”

His footsteps retreated toward the bathroom.

You felt so heavy…

You just wanted to close your eyes and go to sleep.

A warm cloth touched your back, stroking up and down, cleaning up after Hotch’s release.

Voices were murmuring quietly around you, and then you felt someone—probably Hotch—lift you from the table.

You barely got your eyes open, just enough to look around.

Spencer was gathering all your clothes, you were resting on Hotch’s lap, Emily was digging in your go-bag—she pulled from it a pair of sweats and a t-shirt—then she brought them over and started dressing you.

You didn’t know at what point she had put her clothes back on… just that she was dressed.

Spencer put your discarded clothes into your go-bag and then he came back over to sit next to Hotch on the couch. He helped Emily get your arms—which were too heavy to move still—into the sleeves of your shirt.

When they had finished dressing you, Emily sat on Hotch’s other side. He gently lowered your head to her lap, and Spencer pulled your legs up into his.

“Are you sure she’s alright?” Spencer asked quietly.

“Mm hmm…” Emily hummed, stroking your hair tenderly. “She’s just exhausted… four times… is a lot.”

Hotch took your hand in his and kissed the back of it.

That was the last thing you felt before you fell asleep.

*Four Days Later*

You’d thought that it would be awkward…

Coming back to work after fucking three of your coworkers—one of whom is your boss—at the same time.

But it wasn’t.

It was exciting.

The four of you were all smiles when you looked at each other, secret smiles that no one else was aware of, and knowing glances had been passed back and forth all morning.

Hotch had accidentally brushed across your hips with the back of his hand when he’d passed you in the bullpen.

There was a bruise there from the table where he’d fucked you, and he knew it. He was reminding you on purpose.

Spencer had been glancing at your lips all morning, a soft pink flush coloring his cheeks each time. Likely remember how he’d come down your throat.

Now, at the round table, Emily squeezed your thigh once under the table. There was a bite mark there that hadn’t yet faded. One that she’d given you.

All their attention was making you feel a bit overheated, so you pulled your French pin from the pocket of your slacks and pinned your hair into a twist.

You noticed, after you’d done so, that Hotch was giving you a very smug look. You felt like there was something else behind it, other than the obvious, but you couldn’t figure out what.

Everyone was distracted, just waiting on the last of the team—Derek and Garcia—to straggle into the room. They’d made it to the door, but Derek was on crutches so they were taking their time and everyone was fine with that.

But then Derek stopped—right behind you—and laughed.

“You uh— you got a little somethin’ somethin’ on the back of your neck, there Lil’ Mama…” He teased.

You reached up to touch your neck, confused, you looked up at him.

“What?” You asked.

“Looks like somebody had a little fun this weekend.” He joked. “That’s a pretty interesting place for a hickey…”

You paled, then blushed, immediately pulling the pin out of your hair and letting it fall down your back to cover the mark.

“Morgan.” Hotch said quietly—to hide the amusement in his tone—his eyes flicking to you briefly over the top of the file he’d been pretending to read. “Leave her alone.”

Derek threw his hands up in surrender and kept making his way to his seat.

One half of the room moved on, assuming that Hotch had just scolded Morgan out of a need for professionalism, and was choosing to cut you some slack over a mark you clearly hadn’t known existed.

But the other half knew better.

Rossi—who had returned from his book tour just the night before—stood to pull out Derek’s chair for him and took one elbow, while Penelope took the other.

While they helped him get settled, you threw Hotch a scathing look.

Because the only one who had left marks on your neck, had been him.

He was already smirking back at you, smug as shit.

Emily and Spencer were biting their lips to keep from laughing and they didn’t dare make eye contact with each other, or they were going to lose it.

You just stared a hole through the smirking Unit Chief, silently berating him for leaving a mark where you couldn’t see it.

And the bastard winked at you.

Then he cleared his throat and you let your expression go blank as the others all came to attention.

oneshots / blurbs:

profiled (19k) 🐖 - @geminiwritten

me & u (5.7k) 🐖🦴 - @idfkitsbeenawhile

loose morals (11.2k) 🦴 - @canuck-eh

quarter zip (?) 🐇 - @hotchsbear

the tie that binds (3.3k) 🦴 - @maeafterdark

first impressions (2.6k) 🐇 - @chithereader

That was all it took for Penelope to dive into the juicy info she'd gathered since she arrived that morning.

From your understanding, Joy had been in the process of starting some food prep with her hubby when Kai woke up sick. Of course, they'd dropped everything and took Kai to the ER. His temp was way too high, and he complained of tummy ache. The ER took them forever. Kai was diagnosed with a stomach bug that should resolve itself in a few days. By the time they returned to Dave's place, they'd been too exhausted to even recall the mess they'd left behind.

Kai, understandably, has been their priority over any cleaning they might've done this morning before Penelope and Derek arrived.

"Penny," you surveyed the damage, not comprehending how a little prep has led to this much mess, "this can't be all Joy."

"Oh, it's not," she assured you before she recounted more of this kitchen's odyssey.

When she and Derek arrived, they did set out to clean up and start over, but neither of them had ever really been so great at making pasta, let alone Dave's favorite dishes. They'd gathered every cookbook they could find around the house before Penelope got out her laptop.

Every appliance Dave owned had been pulled from their respective spaces and used in some capacity. Not one of them had been saved from a dusting of flour or whatever paste the two had seemed to create instead of pasta dough. Some of it even appeared to have started crusting over, hardening where it'd been left.

"Take these," you said in a nonsense but gentle tone, "and get Aaron. I'm going to need his help in here. Oh, and Penny, please pray I can get through this mess and still have time to make everything we agreed to make."

"On it, sweet lady," she said, her heeled steps clicking her departure. She paused in the doorway and met your gaze over her shoulder, her smile sweet and infectious. "I'm really glad you're here, and I have complete faith in you."

You surveyed the mess once more, developing a working game plan. The mess would take at least a half-hour to clean. Another hour or so to make enough food for the surprise party. Time would be cutting it close, but you felt confident this could work.

"What do you need, honey?" Aaron asked, his arms coming around your middle.

Your confidence increased at his arrival and sweet words of assistance.

Turning in his arms, you rose as high as your toes allowed to place a sweet kiss on his lips. A smile crept over your features as you met his warm brown eyes. "Your attention to detail and some elbow grease."

"You've always got those," he said with such promise. His lips curved into a grin that had your insides melting a little, but you reluctantly pushed those feelings aside. Oh, this man could do things to you that you never thought anyone would be able to do.

It took a moment before you regained your professionalism and set him to work.

Between you two, Dave's disaster of a kitchen returned to his level of pristine cleanliness. You'd even done it with a few minutes to spare with the half-hour block you'd estimated earlier.

It helped that you two had learned to work so well together, having cooked many meals together.

Sure, the days where Jack joined were a bit more chaotic, but they were no less fun and soul healing. Jack, not so little anymore, still proved helpful and resourceful whenever a mishap threatened to topple whatever plans had been made. He'd even picked up quite a few skills from both you and Aaron, doing his part whenever it was called for.

You wouldn't trade any of the days you've shared with Aaron and Jack for anything, you realized, as he set up the few appliances you needed. Your love for them had been set deep within your heart, and you looked forward to having as many more as they'd allow you.

"What's that face?" Aaron asked, his hand coming up to trace over your cheek. "I don't know that I've seen that face before. You okay, honey?"

Shaking yourself, you smiled with all the love you had. "Yeah, I'm good. Really good."

He studied you another moment. Whatever he saw must've lent truth to your words because he leaned in and pressed a quick kiss to your cheek.

A squeal from the doorway had you both turning towards it. Wry grins stole over your features as only one could make that noise from the team, and that was Penelope.

"You two are just so cute," she gushed.

Her hands were clenched beneath her chin as she practically vibrated where she stood.

You could only shake your head as you asked, "Need something, Penny?"

"Oh, yeah, I need to borrow Hotch. I'll send him right back, sweet lady."

After assuring Aaron and Penelope you could manage on your own for a bit, you quickly set about to work. The first task you needed to complete was making enough pasta for everyone joining for this celebration of Dave's latest bestseller.

A quick glance at the clock promised you'd have just enough time to get everything finished on time as long as no other hiccups occurred.

Aaron returned a few minutes later, and Joy even managed to join you two. She quickly figured out what was left and set about doing that, her gratitude evident despite her exhausted state.

When you were certain you had everything under control, you quickly searched out the fully stocked fridge and cabinets of Dave's kitchen. After grabbing a few items, you set them down on the counter and quickly made up something soft but filling for Joy, Kai, and Shawn. It wouldn't do to make them wait another hour or so for Dave's surprise dinner to eat something.

"You really don't have to do that," Joy said when she realized what you were doing.

Shaking your head, you shushed her. "It's not a problem. I've learned how fussy a young boy can be when they're not feeling well. This was one of Jack's favorites whenever he caught something. Maybe it'll help Kai as well."

Joy didn't argue after that, simply sat and watched as you finished everything up yet again.

When you would've trayed it up, Aaron stopped you, nudging you aside and taking over. His hands took up the few plates and bowls you'd prepared and set them in a manner that only one trip would be needed.

"I'll bring the tray if you'd like to grab the drinks, Joy," he said and waited until she led the way from the kitchen. When he reached the doorway, he paused a moment to meet your gaze. The softest smile graced his features as he said, "Do you know how much I love you?"

A smile bloomed until your cheeks hurt.

You nodded. "I do, and I love you just as much, Aaron."

"That's impossible, honey."

He didn't give you the chance to argue, his feet quickly taking him out of the doorway and catching up to Joy.

With the kitchen to yourself once more, you turned back to what was left to do.

Well, you thought you had it to yourself.

A noise near the back door had you turning to find Dave standing there. His suitcase sat at his feet and an amused but affectionate expression rested on his own obviously face.

"How long have you been standing there?"

"Long enough, mia bella," he spun his keys in his hand before coming further into the kitchen and sitting at his large island, "to know how much you mean to this team and even to my family."

Being the premier profiler, he didn't give you a chance to flounder but rather continued by changing the subject. "So, how much damage have they done to my house?"

You huffed, shaking your head at him. Amusement filled you when you caught the twinkling humor lurking in his expressive eyes. He only allowed a few people to see his mischievous side, and you felt quite honored to be one of those people.

"I'm sure it's not too bad. I did try and tell them this was a bad idea, but they were quite insistent as I'm sure you're aware."

"You're a good kid. If Aaron doesn't put a ring on your finger soon, let me know. We'll find you a good Italian boy, someone who'll appreciate all you have to offer."

To emphasize his words, he reached into the pan closest to him and snatched some of the pasta you'd just finished preparing. A soft moan of appreciation left his throat almost involuntarily, chewing slowly to enjoy each of the flavors you added.

"If I were twenty years younger…"

"You would make me wife number five?"

"You wound me, mia bella."

"My apologies, Dave," you said sincerely.

"Hotch is gone five minutes, Rossi, and you're over here trying to propose to his girl," Derek said from the doorway, his brows raised even as a wide grin spread over his face. "You're either a brave man or a stupid one. Ring or no ring, we all know Hotch is all in with Pretty Mama."

"That I am," Aaron agreed, stepping back into the room.

He didn't stop until he returned to your side where he belonged and had belonged for some time. His arm came up to wrap around your waist even as he dropped a kiss into your hair.

In a voice low enough only you'd hear, he said, "I have the ring at home. I'm taking you to dinner this weekend. Your favorite place. Our favorite table there. Have them slip it into your favorite dessert. Hope with everything in me that you'll say yes."

"You got Jack's blessing?"

He nodded. "He helped me pick out the ring. Even told me it took me long enough."

Laughter spilled out of you at that. Leave it to Jack Hotchner to know what he wanted before his father did. It heartened you to know that Jack cared about you that much as you cared about him just the same. You'd do anything for Jack, including stepping aside if he didn't want you in his or his father's life anymore.

Meeting his gaze, you found yourself getting lost in the love he so freely expressed in his gaze. It was enough to have your breath catching. His love for you hadn't been a secret for several months now, but every time he looked at you like that, you always lost your breath. How could you not when you had a man like Aaron Hotchner?

"What do you think?" he asked after a moment too long in silence. "Bad idea?"

You shook your head. It took several rapid blinks to get your emotions back under control. One of your dreams was coming true even if it was going to be another couple of days. You could wait. You would wait forever if it mean a lifetime with Aaron and with Jack.

"No, no," you said, swallowing down the lump that had risen, "it's a very good idea. The best idea you've ever had."

"So, you'll say yes?"

Happiness swelled within you, but you tempered it. No reason to not tease him for a moment after the incredibly sweet bombshell he'd dropped on you. Your eyes were surely twinkling as you said, "Guess you'll have to wait until this weekend to find out. Though, I'm certain the odds will be in your favor."

"You're going to keep me on my toes, aren't you, honey?"

"Always."

He pressed a kiss to your hair again as he whispered, "Good."

They had barely exchanged two words during the journey, but their gaze had alternately fallen on their cockpit neighbor. They were both intelligent: he understood her intentions, and she knew he wasn't fooled. Hotch's goal had surely been to find reasons to make her stay. He had failed. He had failed before even opening his mouth because her decision had been made; she had taken all the necessary steps and given her word. And in any case, she couldn't see herself enduring this situation any longer, as it caused her so much suffering. She had gritted her teeth as much as she could, but it had become too hard for her. More than this presence, it was her own failure that was now unbearable.

But she had agreed to his proposal to discuss it. To share one last moment with him, as she had experienced so many times before. After his divorce, but also after his assault and after Haley's death. She sometimes felt like she had spent more time in the giant's living room than in her own apartment. Her forced exile to France seemed to spell the end of their friendship. At least, that was what she was thinking. Her personal feelings were what they were, but she was aware that the possibility of reciprocity had disappeared forever. Even more so with the appearance of this Beth, whom everyone found adorable and perfect for him. She hated her even before she saw her face or knew her name. And it hadn't gotten any better when she found out what she looked like. Her resentment was matched only by her despair.

However, she had been wrong on every count. All of this had been nothing but a masquerade. A disillusioned attempt to distract him from the reality he could not bring to life. Because, like her, he thought it was a bad idea for the balance of the group. Because, like her, he remembered that it was forbidden. Because, like her, he imagined he was the only one experiencing such emotions. Beth was beautiful, funny, cheerful, cultured, and Jack liked her very much; but she wasn't “her.” She wasn't the one who made his heart beat. She wasn't the one who brightened his days. She wasn't the one who enlivened his nights. She wasn’t Emily.

Aaron had sworn to himself that he would not be like his father. Not to be an abusive, violent, and unfaithful partner like Stanley Hotchner had been to his mother. He promised himself he would not be the absent and indifferent father that this man had been to him. By force of circumstance, he had countered fate for this second oath. It still had a few flaws, but the chances of his son hating him in a few years were diminishing. For the first one, on the other hand, he had failed. The moment his subordinate's lips touched his, his urges overpowered all forms of reasoning. 

Why did she do that? She couldn’t tell. But she did it. She had followed her instinct, which had prompted her to stand on tiptoe and press her mouth against his. She had expected him to reject her, to remind her that he was in a relationship and, incidentally, her boss. At least for two days again. Instead, he had prolonged her kiss and gradually led her to lean against the wall facing the front door.

With their eyes closed, their brains overwhelmed by all these new sensations, their hands naturally ventured onto the body they desired so much. First chastely, caressing that face, running their fingers through that hair, lightly touching those arms and shoulders. Then, when, pressed tightly together in this unexpected embrace, their desire became apparent, their actions were directed toward a single goal: to give free rein to the flame that had been consuming them from within for what seemed like an eternity. They did not consult each other, did not speak, they simply acted, guided by this same passion for each other.

They undressed on their way to the bedroom, leaving behind all those pieces of fabric that were weighing them down. He might have had a moment of hesitation when he realized that he would be openly displaying his mutilated chest to this woman whom he found incomparably beautiful, but his doubts were instantly dispelled because he knew, deep down, that his scars would neither shock nor disgust her. And in doing so, she reacted exactly as expected. She kissed those marks as she did to the rest of his skin and did not make the slightest grimace.

She could have rejected him when she caught that he was going to see the damage caused by Doyle, which he had been unable to prevent. She didn’t, serene. He was not the kind of man to base his choice on his lovers' physical appearance; it took much more than that to arouse his interest. And she exactly ticked that box. He caressed her scars as he did to the rest of her body. Thus, anything that could have stopped them in this madness – in this betrayal – was ineffective. And when, lying on top of her, he slipped between her thighs, they both knew that nothing would stop them that night.

He pushed as far as he could into her intimacy, sliding into that warm, moist cave that gently enveloped him. He sighed, overwhelmed by nervous information intended to make him lose his footing. She encouraged him to move. He obeyed, slowly and meticulously at first, then with passion and energy as they were overcome by the pleasure coursing through their veins. Her legs wrapped around his hips, which were deliciously pounding her pubis, she clung to his sweat-glistening shoulders until she dug her nails into his already stitched skin. She moaned, urged him on, whimpered, roared, and then came like never before. She trembled beneath him; her eyes rolled back, her breath short. He pressed himself roughly against her and, with a liberating groan, spilled his seed into the hollow of her belly.

They reluctantly broke away shortly afterwards. They should have realized the magnitude of their mistake at that moment, apologized profusely, and he could have disappeared from that place, gathered up his clothes, and gone home, ashamed. Instead, he lingered. They remained entwined in those soiled sheets, mouth to mouth, skin to skin. They continued to explore the contours of this anatomy, which they had only been able to guess at until then. So much so that Aaron was soon ready to take her again. A prospect that did not fail to excite Emily.

She rolled him onto his back, straddled his chest, and impaled herself on this spear that seemed to have been fashioned just for her. Sparks crackled in her chest as soon as she began to sway. Her thoughts turned into an indistinct fog when he placed his large hands on her thighs. She lost all sense of decency when orgasm loomed assuredly on the horizon. She rode him expertly until his defenses broke down and he spilled himself generously inside her. An abdication that caused her to lay down her arms in turn. Her muscles twitched for two heartbeats, then the soufflé collapsed.

She came back and lay down beside him, and their eyes met. There were no negative feelings in what they read in each other. They were happy, relieved, proud, and ready to do it all over again. They were in love, it was undeniable. They didn't say a word; there was no need. Their smile spoke for themselves. Their irises shining brightly, too. Their lips pressed together again, their tongues intertwined once more, their fingers began to wander again; they were not satisfied. They merged a third time with all the strength they had left. He knew there would be no fourth. Not this night nor never. She was leaving, and he had to return to the one he was supposed to love. It was the last of the last. The last stand. They poured all the tenderness they had for this being they had no right to desire into it. And once again, the pleasure was there.

Flooded with endorphins, she listened in a half-sleep to the shower water running, washing away and carrying off all traces of their misdeed. She reacted weakly to the kiss he placed on her forehead. Finally, she heard the front door slam shut before sinking into unconsciousness. The next day, what she did had not been decided in advance either. It was only when she grabbed her pill pack and froze without thinking that she began to reason. She couldn't say how long it had lasted, but the fact was that she had put the object back in its place, intact.  

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