#unionjackpillow

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.

Getting involved with Carolyn Knapp-Shappey had been, if Herc was entirely honest with himself, something of an accident. Falling so quickly, completely, and irrevocably in love with her had certainly not been part of any plan; neither, under any circumstances, had he counted on gaining her three young sons into the bargain. 

Less than a year ago he had been comfortably a bachelor, and though by all accounts he had largely outgrown most of the weekend pursuits of his youth, still his Saturdays would have been deeply unlikely to involve celebrating the sixth birthday of a child he is finding it increasingly difficult not to think of as his own son. More improbable still would have been his evident enjoyment of this activity. 

Yet here he finds himself, one of a small handful of similar groups making their way slowly into the Duxford Air Museum, with varied enthusiasm. 

A little blond girl with racing cars on her T-shirt, Martin's age or thereabouts, is pulling her mother along with stolid determination, while a group of awkward looking teenagers shuffle in looking defiant and ill at ease, all carrying scuffed notebooks and chewed pencils. 

Arthur is bouncing up and down with excitement beside Herc, but this is not necessarily unusual behaviour in Carolyn's youngest child. 

Douglas looks so flatly disinterested that it almost cannot be genuine. Herc notices his eyes lingering on the large information panels that line the foyer somewhat longer than probably needed for someone actually indifferent. Herc decides it is for the best if he doesn't draw attention to the fact; Douglas is noticeably cooler towards him than the two other boys at the best of times.