Date Night
Summary: Aaron Hotchner x fe!Reader -> Your friendship, and working relationship, with Hotch starts to feel like something more.
Disclaimer: mentions and descriptions of in-field injuries, flirting, friends/co-workers to lovers, domestic fluff, hotch wants to date you, slow dancing.
It was odd, really. Being friends with the guy who was also your boss.
Well, Unit Chief.
Yourself and Aaron Hotchner had bonded over day-old take out, dressed in paint splattered clothes, whilst sitting on your very empty living room floor.
You were relatively new to the team at the time so you didn’t exactly feel like you could ask for their help in decorating your new place. Hell, they didn’t really know you’d bought your new place to begin with.
But Hotch did.
Which was something you didn’t know until there was a knock on your front door one day; he brought supplies and beer.
“I know what it’s like to move in and do…all of this. Figured you could use some help.”
From that day on, you seemed to be one of the select few who got to know more about Aaron outside of work. The guy who he was when he wasn’t Agent Hotchner.
Truthfully, there was really only one issue with it.
When you got hurt, and tried to hide it, the one person who you wanted to confide in…was also the guy you had a duty to tell due to the nature of your work.
“Why are you standing like that?” Hotch had chuckled a little, waving his pen at you as he accepted your finished paperwork.
But the second you hesitated in your answer, his gaze was snapping back to you and he was standing to close his office door.
“Are you hurt?” He asked. “Tell me quickly.”
“Nothing too bad.”
With a deep sigh, the door closed and he turned towards you. “Show me.”
“Hotch-”
“I’m not being your boss, right now,” he said, although his tone was ringing alarm bells in your head. “Show me.”
Keeping your eyes on his ones, that were slowly turning to daggers, you sighed and carefully lifted your t-shirt.
Your collared shirt had torn whilst in the field. And, in your defence, you did go to the medic and he cleared you.
It was a simple cut that just had to be cleaned. They did warn you that it probably would continue to bleed, but it wasn’t deep enough to need stitches or even glue.
All of which you told Aaron, whilst his fingers delicately reached out and ran across your exposed skin.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” He asked.
Although his tone sounded brash, he also sounded hurt.
“I’ve got it handled,” you shrugged, your voice quiet.
His gaze softened as he looked up at you, from where he was crouched at your side. But that same gaze quickly hardened when he looked at your scar. It was still bleeding.
Not that the deep navy blue t-shirt you were wearing showed it visibly.
There was a damp patch, but nothing drastic.
“It just…”
“It's just, what?” Aaron asked.
You shrugged, trying to hide the grimace of your face. “Hurts when I stand a certain way.”
Aaron noticed the deeper breaths you were taking through your nose, trying not to concentrate so much on the pain when that’s all you could do.
“Okay, sit down.”
“I can’t.”
“Then lean on my desk,” he told you as he stood. “But stay here.” He looked at you directly, making sure you were listening to him. “I’ll be back.”
And he was. With a first aid kit.
Shutting the door behind him, he laid the box down and removed his jacket.
“Lift your shirt, again.”
Following his orders, you did as he told you and sat in the quiet of his office whilst he cleaned your wound, covered it in a couple of adhesive bandages before wrapping a full bandage around your middle.
“A little over-excessive, don’t you think?” You asked as he leaned into you, unfurling the bandage in his hands as he ran it around your back, across your middle and back around again.
You tried to ignore the way he leaned into you so close that you could smell his fading cologne, made you feel.
“Maybe,” he said. “Maybe not.”
Then, tying off the bandage but remaining close to you, his gaze fell on yours. “Why didn’t you say something sooner?”
“It didn’t start bleeding till a couple of minutes ago,” you admitted. “I had it handled.”
“You know that’s not what I mean.”
Slowly, you nodded. “Because I didn’t want you to worry. Because the first thing I did was check with the medic and get it sorted. Because I was okay.”
Aaron sighed, hanging his head. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
You nodded. “I didn’t want you to worry.”
“I always worry.”
“I know. Hence, why I didn’t want to tell you.”
“You should have.”
You nodded. “I know. And, I would have.”
He looked back at you. “When?”
“Eventually.”
“Y/n-”
Before he hanged his head again, you held it in your hands and made him look at you.
“You spend your days working with your team, and then you spend your nights doing all of the paperwork about the day. You barely take five minutes to breathe, let alone just…be still,” you told him. “So, even though I might have to tell you of my injuries, I also know you’re my friend. And my friend, like the rest of us,” you pointed out, “has had a very long day and is somehow managing to make it longer. So, if me not telling you about my injury gives you one less thing to worry about, then I’m not going to tell you.”
“But I found out anyway.”
You hummed. “I think I failed to take your profiling skills into account.”
For the first time in thirty seven hours, you heard Hotch laugh. Again, he dropped his head, but your hands lay loose on his face before moving to his shoulders.
“I’m sorry I ruined your masterplan.”
You shrugged. “It’s alright. I had a secret plan to get you away from your desk. I didn’t fully think it out, but you patching me up seemed to do the job.”
As you watched Aaron physically calm down, his gaze locked on yours softly, he smiled. “Yeah, I guess it did.”
Rather than deal with the quiet but tension-built moment that followed, as you and Aaron didn’t move from his desk and just kept your eyes on each other – you broke it.
“Make me a promise?”
“Anything.” He said, before quickly adding, “Within reason.”
You smiled. “Tomorrow, you don’t come into work.”
“Tomorrow’s Saturday.”
You nodded. “And I know you.”
You had him there, and he knew it.
“Don’t come in tomorrow,” you repeated. “And don’t think about work. And, if you get bored, come to mine. I’ve got a shed that needs building and it’s not a one woman job, no matter how many times I attempt to balance the roof board on my head.”
Aaron chuckled a little. “Okay. How about ten?”
“Bring coffee and you’ve got yourself a deal,” you told him.
With a smile, he nodded. “Okay, then.”
By mid-day, yourself and Aaron were finishing your garden tool shed. And you couldn’t help but notice as the sun got higher in the sky, the more layers Aaron had ditched by your backdoor.
First his jacket, then his fleece, and then his collared shirt.
Which just left his t-shirt.
That he lifted from his front in order to wipe the sweat from his forehead.
An hour or so later, the shed was finished and you were sitting inside your cooler kitchen with Aaron as you made fresh lemonade and zapped the ice inside your blender to make it smaller.
“And your dating life?” Aaron asked since you’d covered all the other topics.
You forced a smile. “Oh, you know. Stale – as usual.”
“Dating apps not working out?”
You grimaced. “I deleted it after three weeks. That amount of information that anyone can have about you? That’s scary enough. Nevermind the amount of guys that are ‘looking for a girl with no sense of direction’.” You rolled your eyes. “I’m a profiler! And even I don’t know what the hell that means!”
Aaron chuckled a little. “If it helps, I don’t either.”
You nodded, your chuckle soft, as Aaron looked at you. “Ever thought about finding someone…naturally?”
You looked at him. “If this is a ploy from Garcia to get me back to that ‘singles-only-fun-night-extravaganza’ thing then you better stop talking unless you wanna find yourself locked inside that garden tool shed out there.”
He wanted to laugh, but his curiosity and slight concern overruled his expression. “The…what? No. This is me– I’m asking.”
“Oh.” You stood back a little. “Uh, if I’m being honest, I didn’t think it was possible.”
“You didn’t?”
You looked at him with sincerity. Since the moment you met Hotch, you’d understood many things about him. One of those things was that he was a gentleman. He knew to buy flowers, and not just for special occasions. He knew when a woman said she was ‘fine’ she probably wasn’t.
And he wasn’t ashamed to buy period products from the store. That was something you knew first hand.
“Aaron, it’s not like I see the world as a safe place,” you told him. “Being a woman taught me that. And my job proves it. I don’t trust very many people in this world. Meeting someone out there, in the world, if it is possible…it’s most likely rare. And getting rarer every day.”
“That’s…sad.”
You nodded. “Tell me about it.”
Aaron didn’t ask you about it, again. At least, not in depth.
Not until his curiosity peaked one night, whilst everyone on the team was out for drinks one night.
Penelope had been whispering for weeks about how she thought you had your eye on someone. It took almost all of his control to try and not appear like he was completely invested in Garcia’s theories.
Except, as she had sat at the bar with JJ, trying to convince her of the new theory that it was someone inside the bar, Aaron’s eyes immediately found you amongst the crowd of Friday night patrons.
To him, it was like a superpower being able to find you in a crowd. The others had witnessed it so many times, whenever they lost you, they’d simply pull him by the arm and ask him to point you out.
You’d done some undercover work before joining the Bureau full time. It was something that you were excellent at because, for whatever reason, you had a natural talent at blending in with a crowd and disappearing right before people’s eyes.
Except Aaron’s.
When he found you, you were sitting at a tall table in the corner whilst a fairly handsome stranger approached you. But Aaron knew your body language.
You were polite, but he wasn’t the guy you were with.
Selfishly, he was relieved when you turned the guy down and he walked away.
“Hotch, has she said anything to you?” JJ asked him.
“Y/n?”
JJ nodded before Garcia jumped in. “Is she seeing anyone?”
“Uhh, no. I don’t think so. Excuse me.”
Somehow, in the time it took him to buy two beers, cross the bar and reach you, a further three people had approached you.
And you’d turned them all down.
“What did they want?”
“To dance, mostly.”
“And you said no?”
You shrugged. “I didn’t want to dance with them.”
Taking a leap he didn’t know he’d been preparing for, Aaron asked you: “Would you want to dance with me?”
You smiled at him. “Thought you’d never ask.”
Beers in hand, Aaron and yourself walked over to the sawdust covered dancefloor and simply danced together. It was mostly a relaxed two-step to the familiar country song that someone had punched into the vintage jukebox in the corner of the room.
It wasn’t long before the rest of the team were on the dancefloor doing the same. Emily with Spencer as Morgan called out for his ‘babygirl’ and brought her onto the dancefloor.
Will, very quickly with JJ, subtly showed off their ability to dance a two-step around the dancefloor as naturally as breathing.
By the time Shania Twain started playing, Penelope had pulled all the girls into the middle of the dancefloor as their lyrics were yelled out at the top of everyone’s lungs.
For a moment, you felt every guy in the place quake in their boots.
Soon enough, you found yourself back in Aaron’s arms, gently travelling across the sawdust covered floor.
“Garcia thinks you're dating someone, by the way,” he told you, quietly, against the shell of your ear.
“So I heard,” you hummed.
“Something I should know?”
You looked at him. “Is there something you want to know?”
He nodded, just a little. “Maybe. Maybe not.”
“Well,” you started. “To answer Garcia’s question for the thirtieth time this week, no. I’m not seeing anyone. I think that also answers your question, too. Am I right?”
He tried to hide his relief. “Yes.”
“Answer my question?” You asked him, watching him nod.
“Why did you want to know?”
“Because…” Aaron paused. “Because I’m your friend.”
Your brows furrowed a little. Not in contempt, but in curiosity. “Is that what we are?”
He nodded. “I’d say so.”
“Would you ever want to be more?”
You both kept dancing around the floor, but no words passed between either of you as he kept his eyes on yours.
“Yes,” he answered. “But it’s complicated.”
“And if it wasn’t?”
“Then I’d ask you on a date,” he told you, without hesitation.
“Then ask me,” you said.
Aaron paused, waiting for the punch line. But there wasn’t one.
“I think I’ve felt something changing between us for a while,” you said, quietly. “And, not to sound dramatic but, I know in my soul that we’re meant to be in each other’s lives. What capacity is that in? I don’t know. But I’d like to try and find out.”
“So would I,” he agreed.
“Then ask me,” you repeated. “Ask me on a date and we’ll see where it takes us.”
You spotted the playful scrunch in his brow. “Doesn’t it defeat the purpose of me asking if you’re telling me to?”
“Then ask me when you’re ready,” you told him. “There’s nothing against two agents dating. It can be a headache but, considering the amount of migraines we’ve suffered through, I’d be willing to risk it.”
Aaron nodded. “So, if I said that I would pick you up tomorrow at seven, to take you on a date?”
You nodded, “I’d say yes.”
Then he smiled. “Will you go on a date with me tomorrow? I’ll pick you up at seven.”
Leaning into him just a touch, you smiled. “Yes. I can’t wait.”
