the bees envy me ( a. hotchner )
hotch likes to protect you every chance he gets. you love it, for the most part.
or, five times hotch protects you, plus one time you protect him back.
7k words -> female reader, established relationship, unspecified age gap, mostly just fluff honestly, some angst, canon-typical cm violence (mentions of rape & murder from an unsub), implied sexual harassment from creepy drunk guys! this is my first time writing for hotch but i love him and i need my thoughts to be out there
~
1 — THE CROSSWALK
“Do you want to go out for lunch?” Hotch asks you, not stilling in his diligent grind over his paperwork, one hand splayed on his desk, other clutching a pen so gracefully it looks like a part of him.
You’re seated on his couch, legs curled under you, heels kicked off onto the floor. You’d only come up to drop off your finished paperwork from the last case, but his couch is so inviting and you’d let it pull you in.
Just for a few minutes. Then you’ll go back to work on the building pile of cases that need your consulting. There’s something endearing about watching him work, back stick straight, worry lines between his brows begging to be smoothed over. If you had a camera, you’d take a picture — keep it on your desk to look at when the work gets dull.
You look up at him, eyes wide like a deer in headlights. “Me?”
It’s a stupid question even to your ears.
Hotch looks up — makes eye contact with you — and you almost think he starts to smile. He’s almost immune to smiling in the office, but you get him sometimes. “Who else would I be talking to?”
Your face burns, and you swing your legs off the couch. “Yeah, I want to go out. Where do you want to go?”
He rests his pen down and stands, stretching his arm across his body like he’s about to do hurdles, and you watch him like he’s an artist before your eyes. “Wherever you want to go.”
“Really.”
“Mhm.”
You tap your fingers against the worn leather of his couch. Quantico isn’t teeming with restaurants, and you only have an hour, and your mind whirs with the lack of possibilities. “Burritos?”
He nods, shuffling his papers until they’re in a neat stack on his desk. “Perfect. Do you need your coat?”
You do, so you hop off the couch and head down the stairs to your own desk in the bullpen. Reid is the only one still working — Emily and JJ are eating in the conference room, and you think if you ducked your head into Garcia’s office, you’d find Morgan eating there too — and you can’t bring yourself to feel embarrassed at how you’re smiling as you pull your coat on over your sweater.
Morgan and Emily are the first to tease you about your relationship with Hotch. God forbid either of you show PDA in front of the team (which he doesn’t, basically ever, and you try not to, but you fail sometimes) or even look at each other and they’re off like wind-up toys, making fun of you until you’re just about pleading with them to stop.
You don’t really care, though. You think Hotch does more than you do.
“Ready?” Hotch asks, and you nod, sliding your phone into the pocket of your coat. He has his own on, long and black and soft when you touch it, which you don’t yet. “Come on.”
You walk side by side to the elevators, and he holds an arm out in front of the door when it opens, letting you walk in first. Your skin feels hot when the doors shut, and once he’s pressed the button to the lobby floor, you hook your arm around his and lean your cheek into the fuzzy wool of his jacket and keep it there.
He looks amused when he turns his head to glance down at you, and then he lifts his other hand up to brush hair out of your face. It’s quietly intimate, his favorite kind to sprinkle onto you when there’s no one around at the office.
It’s different when you’re at home. You take what you get when you’re here — a love sponge.
“I missed you,” you tell him, which is ridiculous because you spend just about every waking moment with him, being driven to work and hanging out in his office and going back to one of your respective apartments when the day is over.
“I missed you, too, honey,” he says, and the pet name makes you want to melt into a puddle on the floor. “Which burrito place are you thinking of?”
“Poco Loco,” you tell him, popping the p to watch the corners of his lips quirk up, and you feel vindicated when they do. “I think it’s closer.”
“We have time,” he says as the doors open, and you let go of his arm as you walk beside him out the sliding glass doors of the Academy. It’s snowing out — lightly, a dusting coating the sidewalk — but when you step into the biting cold air, the whiteness floats over Hotch’s dark hair, and it makes you smile. “I don’t have to be back until 1:30 for a meeting.”
It’s noon. Hotch rarely takes his full lunch break, and you want to beam that he’ll take even more time to spend with you. “I have nothing else all day,” you tell him.
“I saw a load of case files on your desk that would disagree.”
“I intend on pawning some of that off to Spencer,” you say, and that does get a smile to his lips as he leads you across the parking lot. He parks in the back lot — the employee lot, separated by a street — but no one else on the team bothers to park so far away except him. “He has a biological advantage, ‘cause he can read so fast. Can give me the SparkNotes of all of the cases —“
You take a step off the sidewalk to cross the street, and like a snapped rubber band, Hotch’s arm shoots out in front of your abdomen. You wobble — stomach hits his arm and you audibly say oof like a grown man — and his hand grabs onto your arm to steady you.
A car whizzes by just as you open your mouth to ask what the hell he’s doing. Your face heats up, and Hotch looks at you disapprovingly like you’re a kid he’s reprimanding.
“Look both ways,” he tells you, tone stern like he’s talking to a misbehaving officer, and then pointedly turns his head left and right before continuing across the street.
“Sorry,” you say once you’ve stepped onto the sidewalk on the other side of the road. You are sorry, because you really aren’t ditzy and you always look both ways —
But you were distracted. And you’re distracted now, because it had made you feel kind of nice to have Hotch do that. Not enough to not look both ways next time, but still nice.
His car is close, and he follows you to the passenger side to swing the door open for you. He’s a gentleman, and your heart could burst, and you grab his pink cheeks with your hands to tug his face into yours.
You never kiss at work as an unofficial rule, but he doesn’t seem to care, holding the door open with one hand and dropping the other to your waist. You try to communicate things through the kiss — one for how much you love him, two for how you’re sorry you almost walked right in front of a speeding car (really, who goes 50 in a 25), three for how safe he makes you feel — and when you pull away, you feel satisfied with all you’ve said.
“Thanks,” you tell him, and he grabs your hand and brings it to his mouth, pressing a kiss to the back of your palm. “Sorry my hands are cold.”
“Like ice blocks,” he agrees, and you grin, ducking to clamber into the passenger seat, knocking flakes of snow off of your shoes before he shuts the door for you.
2 — THE COFFEE
“Hey, handsome,” you murmur as you push open the thick curtain to the jet’s kitchenette. It’s only him in there — Hotch — and if there had been anyone else with him, you think you’d bite your tongue with the pet names.
Hotch stands at the counter, mulling over the sputtering coffee machine. For the hour it is (probably 1 in the morning, if you had to guess), he appears awfully put together, every strand of hair slicked back, suit pristine like it always is.
You feel like a mess flying home from cases — you do now, at least, hair tied up and wearing sneakers and not at all looking like the FBI agent you are. He still looks over at you like you’re the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, and your cheeks heat.
“Hi, honey,” he says, and he keeps his voice quiet until you tug the makeshift door closed, curtain swinging with the gentle movement of the jet. “I thought you were asleep.”
“I was,” you say, leaning against the counter beside him, hands braced on the worn laminate edges. “I woke up ‘cause of the turbulence.”
“It’s been smooth for the past few minutes,” he tells you, and you shrug. “You should go back to sleep. It’s late.”
“So should you.” You jut your chin towards the coffee he’s brewing, his hands already reaching for a styrofoam cup to pour it into. He looks guilty even as he does it, and you smile at him. “I don’t want coffee. I just saw you weren’t in your seat and figured you were back here.”
Hotch smiles, too, a sight you’re growing more accustomed to since you and him became you and him. “Am I that predictable?”
“Very,” you nod, and then you feel a sudden urge to kiss him, so you do, leaning up to press a slight kiss to his jawline. He braces one of his arms around your waist so you don’t stumble over until you drop back down onto your feet, and then he doesn’t move his arm until the coffee is done and there’s no reason for him to linger without pouring it.
He pours his coffee into his cup, and you watch him thoughtfully. You like watching him do mundane things, like folding laundry or shaving or pouring his coffee, because you think he makes them look not mundane, putting the same amount of effort into every task as he does catching killers.
It’s impressive. You don’t think you’re the same way — not with stuff like this, anyway.
“I can make you tea, if you’d like,” Hotch says, pressing the plastic lid onto his cup. “There’s a packet or two left of chamomile.”
“I can make it myself,” you say, but he’s already reaching into the cabinet above his head to pull out another cup and a tea packet, and you know it’s a lost cause to argue.
You help, though, heading over to the small fridge on the other side of the kitchenette and digging through it until you find the creamer you like — not to be confused with the s’mores one Reid uses or the soy version Emily prefers — and you shut the door behind you with your hip.
“One bag or two?” Hotch questions, placing the tea kettle over the stove.
“One is fine,” you tell him, placing your creamer down on the counter beside the stove. “We have a while until we land, I think. I can make another cup if I need it.”
“Four hours,” he says, and you cringe. It’s surprisingly rare that jet rides home occur this deep into the night, but there had been a delay due to some storms, and all you can do is thank God that you don’t have to work tomorrow. “Maybe a bit longer because of the storm.”
“Sucks.”
“Yeah,” he agrees, and then he smiles again. “Sucks.”
The tea kettle whistles softly after a beat or two, and Hotch cranks the stove off, grasping the silicone handle to begin pouring the boiling water into your cup.
You lean back and let him make it. He knows how you like it by now, uncapping the creamer to pour just enough into your cup once the tea bag has bobbed for long enough.
He blows on it twice before he caps it and hands it to you. You raise your eyebrows at him and take a sip, even though it’s hot enough that it burns your tongue, and you nod.
“Needs sugar,” you tell him, resting the cup down on the countertop to begin rummaging for it. “But it’s perfect.”
“Since when did you like sugar in your tea?”
“Since now.”
You’ve opened the second cabinet above your head — the one with the boxes of coffee and tea — when it happens. You’re pushing past them to see if the sugar is there when the plane jolts forward,, and you’ve stumbled forward with a gasp when Hotch is grabbing your waist, tugging you back towards him where he stands on the other side of the kitchenette.
“What —“
Your back hits his chest as the cabinet door swings wildly, and you watch as one of the full boxes of coffee pods flies out of its spot on the shelf. It lands on the counter, completing its trajectory, and you know it would have knocked you right upside the head had Hotch not pulled you back.
The plane jerks again, and Hotch holds you tighter to him so you don’t stumble. You can feel his heartbeat against your back — his arm firm around your waist.
You’re not eager to move any time soon. You drop your head back against his shoulder.
When the plane steadies, Hotch lets you go. You turn to face him and he raises his eyebrows at you.
“Impressive,” you tell him.
“What?”
“You know what I mean.”
He smiles, then. You bring your hand up to his face and smooth your thumb between his brows. You like to do that, sometimes, especially when he’s grinning — press against the evidence of all his worries in life. Wipe them away, maybe. Hopefully.
“Could’ve had a horrific coffee-related injury,” you muse. “Knocked me right out.”
“I wouldn’t let that happen,” Hotch says, and your stomach flips because you know he wouldn’t. “The sugar’s in the next cabinet over. I can get it for you.”
You take a step back and let him.
3 — THE DRUNKARD
You’ve just barely slurped down the last drop of your Malibu Bay Breeze when Morgan is wrapping his arms around your shoulders, shaking your frame back and forth.
“Want to get us a round of shots, kiddo?” He asks, dazzling (and very tipsy) grin looking dangerously close to being shot-eating.
Everyone else’s drinks are gone. The team doesn’t get a lot of time to decompress, and it’s almost funny that the one Friday night you all have off in almost a month is spent with each other — drinking, of course, at some bar Garcia had scouted out that’s become your spot.
A bar is a bar. You’ll go wherever the tide takes you — or, more specifically, wherever Hotch leads you. It’s a nice way to live.
You’re not tipsy like Morgan. You’re drunk, head on Hotch’s shoulder and fingers trailing the condensation of your glass. Not shitfaced, but having crossed the hair-thin line of inebriation a while ago.
“Why me?” You groan, but you’re already pushing yourself out of the booth, Hotch’s hand dropping off of you where it had been laying absentmindedly on your thigh while he’s talking to Rossi. He’s touchy when he drinks — you’re touchy all the time.
“Youngest gets the round,” Morgan tells you, which you already knew because that’s how it always is. Normally, you’re a dash more sober when you do, but — “Go on, girl, before we start sobering up.”
No one looks anywhere close to sobering up. The only one close is Hotch (your boyfriend, and just thinking the word brings a smile to your face, though you wouldn’t dare say it aloud) and even then, his face is tinged red and you know he’s at least tipsy.
You clamber over Emily’s lap to get out of the booth. “If you pull your shirt down a bit, maybe you’ll get it for free,” she tells you, calling above the blare of the music as you begin walking towards the bar.
You stick your tongue out at her, and her laugh follows you through the crowd.
You do tug your shirt down. Just a hair. You’d deny it if anyone asked.
It’s easy enough to push your way through the crowd to the bar, pressing your palms to the sticky wood of the countertop. It’s hardly a second until you place your order with the bartender — 8 shots, and everyone’s tipsy enough to not give a fuck what they’re drinking, at this point, so you get the cheapest on the chalkboard menu posted above the bar.
You’re drunk. Your head hurts a tad, and you lean forward with your chin on your palm, watching the bartender expertly pour vodka into eight identical shot glasses.
He’s on the fifth when you feel a hand on your back, low enough to make you feel confident that it’s not Morgan, so it must be your boyfriend, and you grin, turning to face him.
“Hey, I’ve —“
And you pause, because it’s not Hotch and it’s not Morgan. It’s some random guy you’ve never seen, muscular and blonde, taller than you — a stranger, and the very tip of his pinky is on the curve of your ass with how far down his hand is.
“Oh.” You laugh, the sound strange and uncomfortable, and shift out from under the touch. “Um — do I know you?”
Rhetorical question. You know you don’t. Even if you did, there’s no one besides Hotch that you would be okay touching you where this guy was.
“Do you want to?” He asks, leaning his face nearer to yours, and his breath smells like tequila in a way that makes your nose scrunch up of its own volition. It’s a cringeworthy line, and you tug the top of your shirt up on instinct.
“I’m — uh — here with my boyfriend,” you say in lieu of answering his question. It sounds lame to your own ears, and you can tell by how the man’s eyebrows raise that he doesn’t believe you an inch.
He’s big and tall, even taller than you, and he’s killed people before, and he’ll kill you if he sees your hand —
“Your boyfriend is sending his girl up to get shots by herself?”
The bartender places your tray of shots down in front of you like he’d been commanded to, and you practically shove your card in his hand.
“My — my friends are here, too,” you say, pulling the tray closer to you, and you shift away from him when his hand twitches against the bar like he’s going to lift it towards you again. On any other day, you think you could fight him and win, but you’re drunk and tired, and he seems rather imposing in front of you, like you could shrink before him, and you don’t like the feeling.
“Your friends?”
You feel silly, now, and warm in a bad way, and you tear your card out of the bartender’s hand when he gives it back to you, holding the tray close to your chest. “Look, I’ve gotta —“
“Come back to my table —“
You’ve opened your mouth to protest again when there’s a warm arm wrapped around you — palm resting against your shoulder — and you could faint or cry because you know without looking that it’s Hotch, the most formidable presence you’ve ever seen with your own two eyes, looking at the man in front of you like he could rip his throat out with just his teeth.
“Is there an issue?” Hotch says, and his voice is low and stern like it is at work, and you lean into his body like he’s the force holding you upright.
You could fight this guy on any other day, but you can’t now, but Hotch could. Hotch would, if it came to it, you know he would, could roll up his sleeves and knock this guy out without spilling a drop of vodka from the tray he’s pulling out of your quivering hands.
You let him take it. The man stares at you for a beat too long. You feel uncomfortable — a piece of meat for him to salivate over — but Hotch is staring him down and he doesn’t even bother replying, just turning on his heel and vanishing into the crowd like he’d never been there to begin with.
Hotch drops his arm from your shoulders to your waist. He balances the tray of shots easily in one hand. You wonder if he’s ever been a server at any point in his life.
“Are you okay, honey?” He asks, and gone is the unsub-catching voice he’d been giving to your accoster, replaced by the soft one he reserves just for you. “Did he touch you?”
“Yeah,” you say absentmindedly, and Hotch’s eyes dart up to look for the guy in the crowd, but he’s gone, and you wrap your own arm around his waist. Bring him back to Earth — ground him for a moment. “It’s okay. You scared him.”
“I just asked him a question.”
“In a scary way.” You want to kiss him, so you do, standing on your tiptoes to press your lips against his cheek. “Thank you. Thank —“
“Don’t thank me,” he says, but you do anyway, murmuring it again as you press another kiss to his face. “Next time, oldest gets the round. Can’t see anything like this happening to Rossi any time soon.”
“Not unless we're getting a round in Sunday church,” you agree, dropping down to your feet as Hotch smiles, and you set off back into the crowd for your table.
4 — THE INTERROGATION
Brian Gleason is a power rapist and killer, almost textbook. He’s a lackey in his life and in a failing marriage and the only way he derives any power from his life is through the victims he dominates, and it’s your least favorite type of rapist — not that you have a favorite. You don’t. But you think you do have a least favorite, and you think it’s him.
The saving grace is that he’s practically scared of women in his day to day life, so it had been you who had gone with Morgan to make the arrest, because you’re in the age range of his victims and would throw him off his path. You’d waggled your gun in his face until he put down the knife against his throat, and you’d led him out with his hands cuffed behind his back, and you’d met his eyes when he was in the back of the cop car with something like disgust in your gaze.
There’s two bodies still out there.
He’ll only tell you where they are. He’s said as much to Rossi and then Morgan and then Emily.
“Don’t entertain him when he tries to change the topic from the bodies,” Hotch tells you, voice quiet and arms crossed over his suit-clad chest. He’d fought against you going in — yada yada don’t give him what he wants — but interrogations have been going on for almost two hours and you’re no closer to any answers and you figure you may as well take your chance.
Hotch is going in with you. Rossi had wanted to, and Hotch insisted, and you appreciate it.
“What do you think he’ll change the topic to?” You ask, even though you have an idea, because you know Hotch likes to verbalize everything to you before you do something like this.
“He’ll call you pretty,” he says. “He’ll probably say something about wishing he’d gotten to you. He’s going to feel confident around you. Feed into it enough to get him comfortable, but not enough to make him think it’s reciprocated.”
You nod. Your hands are clammy, because you never interrogate anyone unless it’s a strategy like this is, and it feels like the weight of something awful on your shoulders.
“I’m going to be next to you, honey,” Hotch continues, dropping his voice even lower, and reaches for the brass doorknob of the interrogation room. “If you want to leave, tap me and we can come back out and regroup.”
“Okay.”
You wish you could hold his hand as he leads you into the room. Nerves beat in your chest and your legs and your arms, and you hope it doesn’t show in your face as you pull your metal chair back and sit down.
Hotch sits beside you. His knee knocks against yours — you think it’s on purpose.
“Hello, Brian,” you say to him, then, because Hotch had advised you use his name when you can.
“Hello, beautiful,” is what he says in return, and you resist the urge to scrunch your nose. “How have you been?”
“I’d be good if I knew where the bodies of your first two victims are.”
Don’t meander around the request. Make it known — you’re there for a reason.
Brian pauses. “I’ll have to think about it.”
“You said you would tell me.”
“Maybe I don’t remember.”
You want to furrow your eyebrows, but you don’t want him to know he’s affecting you at all. Hotch’s knee presses against yours — you know he’s doing it on purpose, now, angling his body just slightly to the side.
You clear your throat. “I need to know where the bodies are.”
“Maybe you could jog my memory.”
You open your mouth and then close it. You’re not quite sure what the means, but then he leans forward, and you can hear the metal of his handcuffs jingling beneath the table.
He’s cuffed. You still don’t like how he leans over the table like he wants to eat you whole, half standing like he wants to reach you across the table.
Hotch doesn’t like it either. His arm shoots forward, palm pressed to Brian’s shoulder, and he pushes him back into his seat.
“Sit down,” he says, or maybe the better word is commands, voice harsh. His eyebrows are drawn and his lips are pursed, and you would reach out to rest your hand over his knee to cool him off if you weren’t where you were.
Brian sits back down, and you’re glad. Your stomach feels lopsided and you think you can feel sweat cropping above your lip, but you clear your throat again and push it down.
“Tell me where they are,” you say again, clearer and louder, meeting his eyes and holding his gaze because Hotch said that’ll throw him off. He won’t know what to do with a woman looking at him like that.
He’s confident, though. More so than you’d expected. He doesn’t crumble under your glare and he doesn’t even seem to be sweating, and if he was, you’d feel more comfortable.
“I told you, I don’t remember,” he says again, and you don’t lift your gaze. “You know what would help me remember?”
You don’t say anything. Neither does Hotch.
“Maybe if I smelled your hair —“
“Watch it,” Hotch says, just as you’d lifted your knee to hit against his, because you’re not scared but you don’t know where to go from here. You don’t want him to be looking at you like this — but Hotch is there, tone dark and frightening, and you think you would be scared if you weren’t you and you didn’t know him.
You settle your knee back against his. It’s not a tap out. You can do it.
“I’m here because you said you would tell me,” you say, and hope you sound more confident than you feel. “Stop messing around.”
All in all, the interrogation — if you could even call it that — lasts all of ten minutes before Brian is sputtering out a location. A cabin — the woods — a mile east of the lake. It’s enough that you can piece the rest together and Hotch doesn’t let either of you linger for a second, grabbing your arm and tugging you up and out the door, metal chairs scuffing against the ground.
The door is shut and you slump against it, Hotch’s hand still grasping your arm, and you lean into the touch. It’s comforting and you have a pit of something in your stomach, and you don’t register anyone else around you.
“Good job, kid,” Rossi says, shaking your shoulder just a bit, and Morgan and Emily have already headed off to the SUVs to go to the site, and Rossi turns on his heels to follow suit.
It’s you and Hotch. You exhale, and Hotch doesn’t let go of your arm.
“How are you feeling?” He asks, low and coated in concern. You want to hug him but you try not to at work, so you refrain.
“Fine,” you lie, because you don’t feel awful — it had worked out and you’d only been in there for ten minutes, and it’s a win in your book — but you don’t feel good, either, and you don’t think fine is a good word at all. “Thanks for coming in with me.”
You mean it. His presence is all-encompassing and you never feel like you could be in danger when you’re with him.
He doesn’t say you’re welcome or anytime or anything like that, because he doesn’t have to. He just nods, a firm shake of his head, and you know what it means.
“Come on,” he says, and then he drops your arm. “We can go back and pack.”
5 — THE BULLET
Your ears are still ringing when Hotch finally comes up to you where you sit in the back of the ambulance — not being treated, because they’d cleared you, just giving you an ice pack to hold against your head where it’s been knocked against a door — just debriefing.
Thinking. Contemplating.
“Hey, honey,” he says, and you know just by him using that nickname at work that he’s worried about what you’re going to say to him.
No PDA at work. Of any kind. You think you’ve been breaking that rule a lot over the past few weeks.
You’re angry at him — you want to hit him in the face — but you don’t pull away when he presses his hand against your cheek. He holds it there, as if waiting for you to jerk away from it, not moving it at all.
“Hey,” you say after a beat. No handsome or anything like that.
He waits for you to say something else, and you don’t, and he exhales.
“I know you’re upset with me.”
You scoff. “Really?”
It’s immature. You feel immature, especially because Hotch doesn’t even roll his eyes at your comment. He’s so pragmatic all the time and you like it, usually, because it keeps you grounded, but you hate it, too. Hate how you feel like such a child sometimes — teeming with emotions where he tries not to show them.
You would prefer him to get pissed off right back at you. At least then you’d feel like you’re on an even playing field with him.
“You don’t have to like the decision I made,” Hotch says, crossing his arms over his suit-clad chest, having already tossed his vest away the second you two had left the unsub’s house.
“The decision?” You parrot, and you want to cross your arms back at him, but you’re still holding the ice pack to your head, so you glare instead. “It wasn’t a decision.”
“It was.”
“It wasn’t,” and you hope you don’t start getting emotional, because you’ll feel stupid, and you don’t want to. “Hotch, you jumped in front of a bullet for me. That’s not a decision, it’s stupid, and you shouldn’t have done it because I can handle myself.”
He pinches the bridge of his nose, and while you wait for him to reply you replay it in your head — watching the unsub’s gun raise towards you, and then you couldn’t see it because Hotch had jumped in front of you so fast you’d thought he’d teleported, and when the shot rang out you couldn’t tell who it hit —
Neither of you. Just a SWAT member shooting the unsub. Knowing that did nothing to tame how you were feeling — still feeling — riddled with anxiety and feeling bile rise in your throat in the seconds after the shot had rang out, waiting for Hotch’s body to drop in front of you like a puppet with its strings cut.
“It was irrational,” Hotch finally says. “I panicked, honey. I saw the gun raise and —“
He pauses. Drops his hands until they’re on his hips, and you watch him timidly.
“You’re a great agent, and I know you’re capable of handling yourself in the field,” he continues after a beat. “Logically, I know that. Illogically, you’re also my girlfriend, and when there’s a gun pointed at you, my first instinct is to protect you.”
You feel some anger in your heart flake away because —
He’s never called you his girlfriend before. Not to your face, anyway. You’ve called him your boyfriend — to your friends outside the team and your mom — and you know you are, technically, his girlfriend, but the word seems so juvenile that you’d just assumed he wouldn’t think to refer to you like that.
It’s endearing. You like it. You find it hard to stay angry at him when he called you his girlfriend and looks like he’s moments from walking away to go kick rocks.
You drop your hands into your lap, resting your ice pack against your thigh. Hotch watches you — you can feel it.
“Hotch, I don’t need —“ you pause and drop your eyes into your lap. “I don’t want you to jump in front of bullets for me. I don’t want to have to watch you get shot.”
“I know,” he says, and then he takes a step towards you, and you don’t resist when he grabs your hands — untangles them from each other, interlocks them with his. “I know, honey.”
You smooth your finger over the back of his hand. You’re not sure what else to say, exactly, and you hope he picks up the slack for you.
“I can’t apologize for wanting to protect you,” he begins, and you raise your eyebrows at him. “I always want to and I always will. But I’m sorry for making you feel like I think you can’t handle yourself, and I’m sorry for scaring you.”
You sniffle. “It’s okay.”
“Is it.”
It’s not a question — he knows you’re lying.
You shrug, and then nod. “You scared me a lot.”
“I know.”
“I thought he shot you.”
He doesn’t say anything.
You continue. “I love that you’re protective of me, but not — not like that. I think I’d rather take the shot then —“
Hotch squeezes your hands, and you don’t bother finishing your sentence. He knows what you mean, and you’re not sure you could articulate it properly, anyway.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and then he takes another step closer to you, and you drop your head into his chest. It hurts from the slight bruise cropping up over your hairline — your ice pack is forgotten on your thighs — but you don’t mind the pain. “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” you tell him, and you smile when he leans down to press a kiss to your head. And then, because you’re not in the habit of letting nice moments stay nice, you say, “your girlfriend?”
“That’s what you are, right?”
You smile against his chest, and you can’t see him, but you think he’s probably smiling too. “I guess so.” You pause. “You’ve never called me that before.”
“I have.”
“Not that I’ve heard.”
He raises a hand to your shoulder and just holds it there, thumb smoothing along your skin through your shirt. “I guess I’ll have to say it more often.”
“I guess you will,” you muse, and you want it to sound tinged with humor but it’s breathier more than anything, and he presses another kiss to your cheek. It’s soft and sweet — you like it — you like it so much you barely even register him reaching down to your lap to grab your forgotten ice pack, pressing it to the bruise on your head, and you smile.
+1 — THE THRILLER
You’re flipping through the dozens of movie titles Hotch has in his sitting room when he emerges from the kitchen. He’s just showered — you know because his hair is wet, but you can also smell his body wash, like mahogany and teakwood, distinctly him — and changed into one of his old law school shirts, and you try not to let your gaze linger on him.
You’ve stayed the night before, but seeing him like this, domestic and soft and the complete opposite of how primly put together he is at work, makes your face burn anyway.
“What are you thinking?” Hotch asks, and he leans over the back of the couch to see the DVDs you’ve set aside, and you inhale softly to take in the smell of him.
“Halloween. Or Scream. Or —“
“All scary ones?”
You tilt your head to look up at him, and he looks pained.
“Do you not like them?”
He hesitates before shaking his head. “Not particularly.”
You look down at the titles, smoothing your fingers over Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s bright red font. “You’re scared of them?”
Hotch rounds the couch to plop down next to you, and instinctively he tugs your legs into his lap where they’d been curled up beneath you. He rests his hands on your calves, and you hope he doesn’t feel the goosebumps that crop up over his touch.
“I don’t know if scared is the right word,” he says, grabbing the stack of discarded movies you’d set beside you and beginning to flip through them. “But I don’t enjoy them.”
You narrow your eyes at him, and then you grin. “I think you’re scared of them.”
“Do you?”
“Yeah,” you nod, and he turns his head to the side to look at you, and the corners of his lips tick up like he’s trying not to smile. “You’re transparent. You wouldn’t reject my ideas unless you were scared, ‘cause it’s my turn to pick.”
He holds up two movies for you to look at. “Can’t you pick The Wizard of Oz? Or When Harry Met Sally?”
You like both those movies, but you look at them with faux disdain because you have ground to hold. “How can you catch serial killers for a living and be scared of Scream?”
“They wear masks.”
“That’s why you’re scared?”
“Not exactly —“
“Hotch, if you were there, you would figure out it’s Billy and Stu in ten minutes.”
He laughs, and you relish in the sound.
“Not before they killed Drew Barrymore,” he says, and you grin.
“Maybe not that fast,” you agree.
You glance at the movies he’s holding and the ones on your lap. “Maybe we can watch the first 10 minutes of Scream, and if you’re too scared, we can put in When Harry Met Sally.”
It’s a fine compromise, and Hotch leans forward, pressing a kiss to your lips that’s so gentle it makes your skin tingle. “Perfect.”
He climbs off the couch to go put Scream in, and you move all of the other movies onto the coffee table, clearing the cushions for you both to sprawl out on. You hold your arms out to him when he turns back around, and when he’s close enough, you tug him towards you. Pull him down until he’s practically on top of you, and he laughs, letting you curl your body into his.
“Don’t worry, handsome,” you tell him, pressing your cheek into his shoulder, tone sickly-sweet and teasing. “I’m here to protect you from scary Ghostface.”
“Be quiet,” he says, and you beam at him.
