Hotch/Morgan Sideblog

Aaron hears the commotion and sprints toward it, already shouting Derek's name. He leaves the car door open and disregards the fact that his suit is sticking to his skin in the Florida heat.

Derek's fine, of course. He's already got the suspect on the ground, and his only visible discomfort is the sweat dripping down his face. But Aaron sees the baseball bat on the ground. He sees the way Derek winces just a little as he twists to his feet.

"You couldn't have waited?" he asks lightly, because they're surrounded by cops and there's a potential murderer on the ground and he once tried to take Derek to the ER for scans in the middle of an investigation and it had gone ... poorly. Jason occasionally gets a fond look in his eyes and reminisces about "that time Morgan offered to put you in the ER, Hotch, you remember that?"

So Aaron does what Derek didn't. He waits. He takes Derek with him to check out suspects. He doesn't ask anyone at the precinct for an ice pack, or the location of their nearest emergency room. He doesn't say any of the things he's thinking about bruised or fractured ribs when Derek carries the victim out of the cabin.

Then they catch the unsubs. They save the girl. Aaron quietly tells Jason to schedule their flight home for the next morning. He angles Derek toward one of the borrowed sedans and drives off before anyone else can climb in.

"I'm fine," Derek insists preemptively. Aaron hums, politely incredulous just like his mother taught him, etiquette before everything else. "Okay," Derek confesses, "so he got me with the bat. Got one good kick to my ribs." Aaron keeps his face smooth. He hadn't known it wasn't the bat for that second hit. He's glad he got Garcia to send him a map of local places with x-ray machines. "They're just bruised, Hotch. I'm fine."

"Humor me," Aaron replies. Derek rolls his eyes and grumbles and complains about the lack of good music on the radio as he flips through stations too quickly to catch a single song, but he slouches down into the chair. He takes the ice pack Aaron pilfered from the precinct freezer and presses it to his ribs without pretending that they don't ache. He lets Aaron change the station to something soft, lowers his chair and closes his eyes.

He's fine, Aaron thinks, and--for the first time since sprinting through the trailer park earlier that day--he thinks it might be true.

You're right, Morgan absolutely doesn't trust Gideon the first few episodes. We know from the pilot that Morgan wasn't in Boston but was supposed to be. We know he's got serious reservations about allowing Gideon back into the field. And we know, from a few episodes later, that he doesn't want to be in the field with Gideon and a bomb.

What that says to me? At some point after Boston, because Morgan wasn't there, Gideon told Morgan he should have been there. (To fix it, maybe. Looking for someone to blame. Gideon is, after all, going through a nervous breakdown and a lot of people are dead.) But what Morgan hears is that Gideon thinks he should pay for Gideon's mistakes. That he should be dead.

(Hotch asks what Morgan thinks about letting Gideon back in the field, in the pilot. He brushes Reid off when Reid asks about it, which implies that Reid's got very little to do with the decision and no real stake in the outcome. But he wants to hear what Morgan thinks. He's worried, I think, that maybe Gideon shouldn't be there. That Morgan won't be able to work with him either way. That implies something more specific about Morgan's eroded trust.)

2. When Hotch complains that Morgan doesn't trust anyone, what he seems to mean is that he doesn't know everything about Morgan all the time and he needs to. He doesn't do this with anyone else on the team! But he has a whole meltdown about Morgan's secrets in 2x12 and Gideon tells him he's being ridiculous. (Does he care about Reid's childhood? Prentiss's secrets? Rossi's reasons for coming back? Not really. Only when they work their way into the job. Does he get mad that he didn't already know JJ's sister committed suicide? No. He only gets mad at Morgan.)

Does Morgan not trust parts of himself to people? Oh yeah. But so does everyone else on the team, including Hotch. Hotch just doesn't like it when he feels like he doesn't have all of Morgan in any given situation. (It comes back to the end of 4x1 being a conversation about losing Morgan: to an explosion, to a promotion. Hotch doesn't want to lose Morgan. Hotch doesn't like any piece of Morgan being outside of his grasp.)

He's out of the car and already running, badge out and open, immediately looking for the man in charge. "I'm looking for Agent Hotchner. Aaron Hotchner." He doesn't, at this point, know that it's Hotch's car that blew up. But he's not looking for anyone else, and he's not taking no for an answer.

And it gets even better! He hears Hotch shouting, and for a moment he stops, listens, says, "Hotch," quietly. He's not talking to any of those men, not right then. He's locating exactly who he was looking for, a voice he can recognize over sirens, past a barricade in the dark.

He very nearly runs into someone's gun. Morgan--canonically famous for defusing tensions between local law enforcement and the FBI--shouts, "I don't care what your orders are!" at the man in charge in front of everyone within earshot.

Then he proceeds to profile him. He goes from "that's my boss" to "I'm not gonna let my man lay down there like that," and while it warms the Hotchgan heart to hear that, I assume he switched phrasing specifically to reference the "never leave a man behind."

And it works, though it seems to work partly because poor Warner's other option is to let his men shoot Morgan, who clearly isn't leaving.

Then Morgan sprints down the road shouting "Hotch!", because it's not enough to get there, no, he needs to answer Hotch's cry for help, he needs to let him know he's coming. And Morgan's not dumb. He knows what the orders were, and he knows why: he knows the area is still dangerous. But his gun isn't out and he isn't moving slowly enough to use it if it was, since he has to skid to a stop before he reaches Hotch and Kate.

He immediately defers to Hotch, despite the fact that Hotch is clearly in bad condition himself. Then Garcia calls and Morgan is half on his feet because he knows Hotch is going to send him after the bomber, but he still waits for the order. (Loyal. Semper Fi, Capt. Warner might have said, though he probably would have shaken his head as he did.)

(More baffling that Capt. Warner doesn't report the unauthorized ambulance? Very confusing.)

(Second side note: "Thank your partner, he did it all," is an amazing thing for a terrorist to say to the local head of the FBI when what he's doing is putting a giant bomb under a hospital. Love that. Hotch is definitely going to remember that line in his nightmares.)

Morgan strides into the hospital again, badge ready. (This badge he's used twice in a few hours to immediately direct everyone's attention to Hotch. This badge Foyet takes later in season four and uses to leave Hotch at a hospital. Imagine how Morgan feels, learning that.)

He doesn't ask about Kate (he already knows, as is made clear later). "How's Aaron Hotchner?" Then he hears Hotch being difficult and immediately heads toward the sound. Familiar with it, which brings up the delightful idea that he's dealt with an unwell and unmanageable Hotchner before. (You see it in 2x19, that one of the things Gideon and Morgan do is care for Hotch.)

Morgan deals with Hotch, "Stop, calm down," a hand out, and also tells the doctor to stand down, though his voice is softer, kinder when directs Hotch. Hotch immediately turns to Morgan with his questions. Morgan answers, and one suspects that he was the one who knew the clothes needed to be brought from the hotel post haste, because who else on the team would be worrying about Hotch's luggage?

He doesn't tell Hotch to stop thinking about the case, but it's clear from his short, calm answers, that he knows where Hotch is going with the questions: the profile is wrong. (This is what they do. And the beauty of Hotchgan and several years pre-canon, is one can assume they've done something almost exactly like this before.)

The team goes to the hospital, and Hotch is already dressed, tie on. Morgan stands back a little, but he's watching Hotch. He's right: one target. He keeps watching Hotch after he speaks, and Hotch looks back at him.

Also, somewhat hilariously, they realize the bomber is going to try to detonate the bomb manually and Hotch says, "Where's Morgan?" and Read says he went down to the ambulance. "Alone?" Hotch says, sounding shocked, but clearly Morgan told the team he was going to the ambulance and equally clearly no one else thought they needed to go with him. (And why would they? Morgan has been sent into absurdly dangerous situations alone the entire series.)

And then the end! I love the end. Hotch is outside with his all important duffel bag, and Morgan strides up going "uh uh uh uh." He's joking, playful. Canon doesn't explain why, so there are a few options: he knows Hotch is about to be irked that he's driving and he's trying to lighten the mood in advance. He knows Hotch is going to be irked and he's trying to make him more irritated just for fun. He knows they have a lot of air to clear and there's no point in starting out serious and angry? Could be anything.

"Don't you have something better to do?" Hotch asks, looking annoyed, though Morgan is perfectly honest that he's the one who had Agent Davis reassigned.

"Than annoy you for three hours?" Morgan replies, and there's the hint of a smile. "Hell no." And he arches his eyebrows just a little, waiting. "Give me the keys," Hotch says, and presumably this is what Morgan was waiting for, since there's absolutely no pause before he says no.

"Let's go," he says, gesturing Hotch forward, and Hotch goes.

Then he starts innocuous conversation about who the target was, but Hotch refuses to play nice. He shuts that down and instead says, "Quantico's requested that you transfer to run the New York office."

It's a challenge. It's a shove. And Morgan's response isn't to accept or deny: it's to bring up Kate. That she existed. That there should be respect for her absence.

Then, in a question it's hard to tell if both of them were expecting or not, "Don't I need your recommendation?" Hotch doesn't answer, and Morgan waits a moment before continuing, "You didn't give it, did you?" but--and this is crucial--he doesn't sound surprised. Makes it look like he brought up the recommendation specifically because he already knew or suspected that Hotch hadn't given it. (Makes you wonder if he already knew about the transfer request, too.)

Hotch claims Morgan still doesn't trust anyone, and Morgan replies that he did it for the team. (Both things can of course be true, though one can point out that Morgan was entrusting hundreds of New Yorkers' lives in Garcia's hands as he drove where he was told.)

"My opinion doesn't matter," Hotch says, turns away. I can only assume that Hotch learned this tactic from his Southern belle mother, because this is spot-on Southern belle. He just needs to flutter a fan and say, "But what do I know? I'm only your boss," long accent on that 'o'.

Morgan isn't having it. "Hotch," he says, sharper than he's said it all episode. "Your opinion matters to me." He emphasizes the "me" part, refuses to let Hotch hide behind "Quantico" or "we're at war," forces Hotch to turn and face him.

"My life matters to me," Hotch tells him, and it's honest, but it's also calculated. "And I have and always will entrust you with it." (It's the "always will" that kills me here. Hotch is like, "I'm going to refuse to recommend you for a promotion and try like hell to make you leave me on the side of the road here, but if someone shot at me after all this I would still assume you would stop them." It's better than wedding vows.) "Would you do the same for me?"

It makes Morgan pause. Work his jaw and look away, the way Hotch has been trying to look away. They both look at the SUV, the same make and model of the one that got Kate killed. "Still wanna drive?" Hotch asks, because again, he was honest but calculated, still trying to escape three honest hours in a car with Morgan.

It doesn't work. But it does leave the question of why Morgan doesn't answer. The implication is that he doesn't trust his life to Hotch, but anyone who's made it through three seasons knows that he trusts his life to Hotch all the time. Constantly. He has no problem deferring to Hotch's authority even when he already has his own ideas, and even in this episode, even after he openly questions Hotch's priorities, he still defers to Hotch and brings him information to let him make the calls.

(Except with the ambulance, but again, it's not like he sneaks off, and he only drives away when it's clear there's no time for anything else. The team is doing things like that all the time.)

Would you do the same for me? sounds like it must mean, "would you entrust me with your life?" but the answer is clearly yes. If that's the focus, one can only assume Morgan doesn't answer because he's spent years listening to Hotch complain about his trust issues and he knows that this is just how Hotch reacts whenever he's upset that Morgan almost died and also wants to make Morgan suffer, too. (This is totally an option. Morgan gets sick of it by season 7, but Hotch brings up Morgan's trust issues in season 2 and Morgan's lack of trust in Gideon is a hallmark of the first episodes, so one can only assume Hotch has been all about Morgan's trust issues since before episode one.)

But! Hotch could have just said, "I trust you with my life, could you say the same for me?" But he doesn't. He starts out with, "My life matters to me." And maybe that's what keeps Morgan quiet. Because that's a different conversation. That's a conversation that underlies Morgan's response of "I did it for the team."

The implication is that Morgan has no problem stepping up for the team. Dying for the team. The conversation might be about trust, but it might also be that Hotch has lost someone he thought he could protect and he almost lost Morgan and Morgan thought that was acceptable. (Morgan could go to New York and Hotch could lose him. Morgan could storm out of Federal Plaza--take a walk, now--and maybe Hotch would never see him again.) You don't trust me, Hotch implies, but underneath that he says does your life matter to you?

Morgan doesn't answer. But he doesn't leave. Because, of course, that's the third thing. Hotch has aimed every word since this conversation began at convincing Morgan to give him the keys and walk away. It's a conversation aimed at losing Morgan. It's a conversation about losing Morgan.

Then we move to New York, where all three BAU women immediately place Kate as a romantic interest to Aaron. (JJ says she looks like Haley. Emily says they liaised.) She is, as Derek stated, a little bit of a pain in the ass.

When she asks to speak with Aaron in private, Derek keeps watching, still trying to tug at the line of their relationship to get a good read on it. She asks about Derek and Aaron gets his "excuse me?" look on his face, which he generally gets before he defends one of his agents to someone.

The next time we see the three of them together is after another murder. Kate asks the older NYPD detective about Son of Sam, so I like to think that either Rossi or Derek (who are the ones the detective tells about being a beat cop then) told Aaron to suggest it to her to smooth things over a little. Then Derek says they probably won't get much from the footage and she is publicly denigrating.

I love the conversation that follows! Derek asks and you can see Aaron think for a moment before answering, and pause another moment before admitting that Derek's at the top of the list to replace her. ("We don't lie," he tells Jordan in season four, but even more than that he knows he has to be careful with Derek's trust specifically, and Derek will accept that Aaron sometimes doesn't say things only if he does say them when it's needed. Watch Derek's eyes move back and forth, reading Aaron's face before he says anything.)

Then he asks why Derek is surprised, but Derek is surprised because he clearly hasn't heard any whisper of this and it's not an SAC job like most field offices but an assistant director job (NYC, DC, LA), so he'd be leapfrogging right over Aaron in promotions. If Aaron is surprised to hear it from Kate, of course Derek is surprised! (I also like to think that whenever there are whispers of promoting Derek, Aaron very carefully squashes them before they can reach the team.)

He also compliments Derek! Before all the glorious tension in the rest of this arc, he says, "you're good at your job. People notice that." And, in the way of them, he says it almost like a challenge. Derek doesn't answer it, but he does soften a little, redirects the conversation to Kate.

They walk back into the building together, Aaron holds the door for all of them and then he and Derek stay together all the way to watching the video.

Then Derek suggests hitting the streets, explains why when Kate doesn't like the idea. That's not unusual: the BAU frequently demands to be involved, they push hard to get their way even against FBI offices. (Derek learned it from Gideon. Aaron no doubt learned it from him and Rossi and Max Ryan.) He doesn't say they won't deliver the profile; he says they could hit the likely areas afterward and the profile could be passed along.

What's unusual is that Aaron intervenes. He almost never does with any of the team, and he's worked with Derek long enough to know that at no point at least in the show has Derek ever run roughshod over the local authorities (or even Gideon, despite thinking maybe he shouldn't have been there and arguing with him frequently). He doesn't need to intervene--and quite frankly, it takes away from Kate's authority as well--but he does. Derek subsides, but it makes Kate look like she needs protecting and Aaron look like he cares more about that than the case, since he doesn't even address why covering the subway stops with people trained to recognize killers might be handy.

(Brief aside. Derek isn't in the hotel lobby later, so it's not a Hotchgan moment, but Aaron's voice goes so high when he tells JJ she could have told him. He's so upset she didn't trust him with the news of her pregnancy. And maybe, my Hotchgan brain says, a little shaky because he knows he just cost himself some of Derek's respect.)

Aaron isn't at the profile the next morning, but Derek is. Derek starts it, Derek defuses the angry cops (traditional to his usual canon role as the cop go between), Derek looks mildly irritated at Kate interjecting since apparently the whole point of not putting them on the streets was that they specifically need to the deliver the profile.

Then there's the next shooting. And Derek was right! He does overreact and he should drop it, but quite frankly the show is constantly validating emotional overreactions from the team, so it's not like they're the epitome of professionalism. (By the end of season 3, the team has allowed JJ's emotions to bully them into more than one case.)

And again, it should be Derek and Kate. But Aaron steps in, and not in the way he normally does, where he's sympathetic and trying to move forward. He pushes back, he mimics Kate, "we're here to deliver the profile," (not do anything else, though the BAU has been left to actually convince the cops she's alienated to work with them), and then he says, "It's not your place to have this discussion."

He is lucky at this point that Derek does not have a drink to throw at him. Like, yes, Rossi is right that Derek got too emotionally involved, but, "My place?" is the nicest response Derek could have made. "What the fuck did you just say?" would also have been completely in line.

On top of getting louder and aggressive, which is unusual for Aaron, who normally meets emotional outbursts by modeling calm, it's an incredibly insulting thing to say. Aaron in season one hands the reins of the case to Derek several times, asks for his opinion, treats him repeatedly as a senior member of the team. Derek at the beginning of season three is leading the team (not officially) and unhappily coping with Strauss.

Furthermore, while I certainly don't think the show intends to make Aaron racist, telling a Black man it's not his place is. Bad. (Had he said that to one of the women the show would have had him getting yelled at and of course proven wrong by the woman in question. He would have been called a misogynist. But not a racist?) He could have easily said, "This is not the place for this," which would have been fine. True! They could have adjourned somewhere! He could have suggested another task! He could have asked Derek to go talk to Garcia! Clearly, the goal is to point out that Derek doesn't run the NYC field office, but not in any way well done. (Also, a good team leader doesn't put his team down in public, also contributing to the not the place concept. The "you need to back off" could have been a "let's table this for now," and again it's a fascinating look into Aaron's own upset that it isn't!)

Then it gets even tenser. Derek's upset. He's upset that he just watched a murder, he's more upset that he feels like they could have done something, he's now upset that Aaron just said whatever the fuck that was to him, and he says, "seven bodies, man."

Here's what's interesting! Normally, when the team is too emotional, Aaron does the good psychology angle. He hears them, he know, he understands, and then he redirects their attention to what they can be doing and what he wants them to do.

He doesn't do that here. It shows how off-kilter his own emotional regulation is at this point, that instead of handling Derek like he normally handles the team, he leans in and snaps, "Which is why we need to stay focused."

Derek's eyebrows go up. Derek, as far as he can tell, has been focused. But--and I love this!--Derek gets very quiet to respond with, "From where I'm standing, all your focus is on her."

At this point he's talking to Aaron. Not shouting at a local agent who isn't listening, not emotionally distraught at his boss. No. This is quiet. Personal.

And it hits. Kate rolls her eyes, but Aaron is livid. He gets quiet, too. Again, it's personal now. "Take a walk," he whispers, and it's quiet. It's angry. "Now."

Derek goes, but it doesn't end the tension. Aaron leans against the desk, looking like he's gotten the wind knocked out of him.