#ajf aaron

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i really truly live for all of hotch’s moments with the girls & the idea that during their first october, he loves to sit on the sofa in the four season room with both sleepy girls and read his book and is only really disturbed when isaac needs help fixing a toy and when mom (reluctantly) calls him in for dinner. she debated letting him sit with his girls until he realized he was hungry.

this is the cutest thing ever

(and yes im catching up on my inbox why do u ask)

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From the time my sister and I were teenagers my dad has always said “the only rule I care about is this one: don’t marry a dumbass. Nothing you do will ever disappoint me. Just don’t marry a dumbass.” And I can see Aaron having this conversation with the girls with all of the seriousness as the conversation when he gave them Haley’s rings

this is beyond valid

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hotch has his sunglasses in his suit pocket and one of the babies reaches out grabs them and puts them on. they’re WAY too big but they’re so proud of themselves like “look i’m daddy!” and their little hands have to hold the frames up and hotch is losing his mind at how cute it is

okay this is the cutest fucking thing in the whole world i am screaming

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This is not really related to #AJF100 but it can be: I just had this very clear image the other day of 3 or 4 year old Sophia calling Aaron “Hotch” after spending the day with all her BAU aunts and uncles

Hotch is SO OFFENDED BY IT, because he’s not Hotch he’s DADDY or DADA and he’ll accept dad he guesses.

Everyone else thinks it’s hysterical of course

okay this is SO funny??? i love it

ajf 100 celebration!

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Had A Thought™️ the other day: mom and Aaron getting called on a case after the kiddos have gone to bed, Caro waking up with the commotion and giving Aaron her pillow pet to take with him 🥺

And u know he sleeps with it on the plane and everyone gives him so much shit

this is so cute oh my goodness :’)

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just thinking about how far aaron would go to protect mom and how fast he’d kick a b*tch if she got hurt🥺

okay yeah you’re right. no notes. nothing to add. perfect thought. 

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I regret it already but does Aaron live to see all of his children finding their own families and paths in life? Who dies first between mom and Aaron? Aaron and Rossi? Do any of the other kids ever have a traumatizing experience like Jack? I guess I just wanna hurt tonight lol.

oh man you wanna HURT hurt okay here we go i’ll outline it

aaron lives to be eighty-nine, and passes in the summer of 2057, after a 18-year retirement. part of his retirement is spent as a consultant for the bureau - teaching courses, getting weird phone calls from the new bau unit chief about cases, etc.

mom outlives him by about ten years, but she’s okay. just like aaron, she’s sharp until the end. isaac moves back in with her and takes on a tenured professorship at his father’s alma mater. 

aaron knows jack’s two sons well into their teen years. he gets to walk his girls down the aisle, know their kids, and joint-lecture with isaac at the FBI academy. when he passes, he has five grandchildren. the only one he doesn’t get to meet is elliot’s second daughter.

dave lives to be eighty. he peacefully passes after a relatively short retirement - exactly how he wanted it, in the winter of 2036. 

the kids don’t have any serial killer experiences. isaac is too young to remember mr. scratch, and nothing else too wild happens after that. the littles have both of their parents well into their thirties, and jack is over fifty when he loses aaron, and sixty when he loses mom. 

so really what i’m saying is aaron’s fears about missing out on his kids’ lives because he became a father so late in life are for naught. he has plenty of life with his kids, and they have plenty of life with him. 

(also babes i made a family tree so im gonna make it pretty and then post it xo)

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i loved hotch’s top 3 parent moments, but what are his top 3 most defeated moments & how do the kids/mom help him cope/feel better

ooooh these got REALLY long so they’re going under a cut (they’re basically three drabbles so i included the ajf tag list (whoops))

a joyful future masterlist

1.

aaron comes back home from very long day full of infuriating people and politics, and isaac has left everything all over the living room floor. he trips on something (probably shoes) and breaks. he doesn’t get mean or anything, but his bark is definitely harsher than he intended. isaac is so so upset, and he holes himself up in his room. aaron feels awful, instantly. mom runs interference, and spends some time in the dark with isaac so he can calm down with minimal stimulus. when isaac is ready, mom goes back into the living room and finds aaron distraught, his head in his hands. 

“i promised myself i wasn’t going to become my father.” 

mom just wraps around him like a koala and is like “you’re not. you just had a bad day. for god’s sake, jack snapped at me over something ridiculous yesterday, and isaac and soph got into a knock-down drag-out fight last week about a puzzle while caro was simultaneously throwing a tantrum about fruit snacks. we’re all allowed to have bad days, and you can make it right. he’s a smart kid - just tell him what’s going on and remind him that you’re not upset with him and that you love him.” 

aaron goes to isaac’s door, knocks, and waits for isaac to tell him he can come in. aaron sits at the foot of his bed, waiting. they sit in the dark for a long time, and isaac eventually crawls into aaron’s lap. his dad tells him everything that happened in his day at work, and rounded it all off with “it was wrong of me to get upset with you, little man. it wasn’t your fault, and i love you more than anything, all the time, no matter what. i’m so sorry, and i hope you can forgive me.”

“i can.” 

mom walks in later to find them asleep, aaron propped against the headboard with his ankles crossed, isaac sprawled across his chest. 

2.

when the girls are older, maybe 14 or 15, he puts his foot down about an out-of-town concert with a friend and their older brother. the concert is a few days away, and sophia mentions it over dinner. 

without really meaning to, he goes into full drill sergeant mode and gets a little too specific about all the things that could go wrong. it was very clear in the moment that the topic was not up for discussion, that he was not under any circumstances going to allow the girls to go to a concert a couple hours away with only a nineteen year-old college sophomore as a supervisor. 

it turns into one of those “i hate you you never let me do anything” teenager moments. sophia gets up and shuts herself in the garage with the treadmill and runs until she’s tired, showering and going straight into her room without a word or glance in his direction. caroline really quietly sets her napkin on the table, and leaves out the back door, headed for the porch swing that faces the back of the property. she, too, goes to bed without saying goodnight. 

mom doesn’t say anything in the moment, and they finish dinner with the boys (isaac, now 16 or 17, and elliot, now 10 or 11) and get them ready to wind down for the night. when they settle into bed, he starts to doubt himself. 

“i was too hard on them, wasnt i?” 

before mom can answer, aaron gets a call from jack (now 26 or 27) on his cell. he tells him that sophia tattled to him about the concert, and he didnt mention this to them, but he’d be okay taking the day off work to take them and their friends, and even find a spot to stay overnight so they aren’t out driving late.

mom eavesdrops. aaron tells jack to hold on a second, and mutes him. mom says that would be a good compromise and reminds him that they aren’t little anymore, and they can mostly fend for themselves (thanks to a few weeks’ worth of self-defense with derek over the summer). “i know it’s hard, honey. i can’t say i’m wild about it either, but if jack goes, i’d feel a lot better about that than the alternatives.”

he sighs, kisses her, and tells jack that would be alright. “i’ll go down the hall and tell them.”

“have some sucking up to do, old man?”

aaron just rolls his eyes and hangs up before walking down the hall. he knocks on the door, and two flat “what”s come from the other side of the door. he opens it, and finds caroline and sophia facing each other from their beds on either side of the room. he could tell they were talking shit, the set of their mouths giving them away. 

they’re looking at him like he’s goddamn war criminal. he pulls caro’s desk chair and sits backward on it in between the ends of their beds. “your brother has very graciously offered to take friday off of work to take you and your friends to the concert and spend the night in norfolk with you.” 

“so, you’re letting us go?” 

he tries not to let the biting resentment in sophia’s tone get to him. “i am. i’m sorry for coming down hard on you at dinner. it was wrong of me, and i understand that it could feel like i don’t trust your judgement. i do.” he looks at them each in turn. “it just freaks me out a little that you’re getting older a lot faster than i thought you would.” 

caro’s lip wobbles, and she throws her covers back and crosses to him, giving him a hug. “thank you. we’ll be good, i promise.” 

“i know, my little love.” 

it takes him a little while to get back into sophia’s good graces, but when he picks them up from jack’s apartment at the end of the weekend, she can’t stop talking about how much fun she had. he’s pretty sure he’s forgiven. 

3. 

its when he first starts dating mom that jack starts to act out. he’s usually a really well-tempered kid, but sometimes he’d snap at her or withdraw and it made her feel awful. there were definitely a couple of nights were he’d snap at her over something small and she would retreat to the back bedroom to take a minute. it wore on aaron to tell her that she wasn’t an imposition, that she wasn’t replacing haley, that she isn’t his second choice or ‘the backup’

they both have this moment of total defeat - they’ve known each other for so long, and jack has known her most of his life, but the change in relationship status really brought up a lot of stuff for the kiddo. 

mom comes around faster, learning to understand that jack is just adjusting and having trouble with the idea that there’s a semi-permanent female figure in his life, and that his dad’s attention is divided. thus, when aaron inevitably breaks down about it, she’s there. 

“i feel selfish. maybe i shouldn’t have -”

“aaron. we are doing everything we can to make this an easy adjustment for him, but it’s difficult.”

“but nothing’s changed! you’ve been here for five years.” 

“love, everything’s changed, and we’ve only been dating for a couple of months. that’s a lot for someone who’s barely seven. you’re not selfish, you’re not a bad parent. you haven’t made a bad judgement call. he’s just really young and is having trouble handling these very big changes in his home landscape.” 

so aaron finds a therapist for jack to see twice a week, figuring it was a good idea anyway with all the trauma he may or may not remember. it’s still sucky for a while, but as jack starts implementing the coping mechanisms he learns and mom takes on a role closer to a peer or friend than a parent, things get a lot easier. 

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