the runner ~ hotch;criminal minds
@stiffinme “I’d like to request a Criminal Minds story, please! One with Hotch, while he’s in witness protection and they have to ask him to babysit another witness because she keeps giving her handlers the slip and has escaped them multiple times, getting as far away as several states before they find her again. And they’re hoping he can corralled cuz he can read behavior before she runs. I would like her to be called Steph, please!”
description: while under witness protection himself, aaron hotchner is tasked with looking after another witness with a history of escaping her handlers
pairing: hotch x female!reader
warnings: spoilers for up to season 12, swearing, things may get a little steamy ;) (also, not sure if this is a “warning” but I stopped watching Criminal Minds after Shemar Moore/Derek Morgan left the show so I’m really not caught up, have no idea what this plotline about Hotch being in witness protection is so if I get anything wrong feel free to let me know and I’ll edit the imagine)
The last thing Aaron Hotchner expected to see when he was put into Witness Protection was two agents stood at the door of his safe house, asking him to help them with another witness.
“Why me?” he found himself asking. “I’m not an agent anymore, I thought you weren’t supposed to ask me to engage in anything FBI related while I’m in Witness Protection.”
“We’re not,” one agent responded. “Not really. There’s going to be a handler with the two of you at all times, you’ll both be watched as you’re supposed to be, just together instead of separate. We’re just hoping...you’ll be able to help us to understand why she keeps running.”
Aaron looked down at the picture that was placed before him. One of the agents was holding the file on the witness, a young woman named Steph, which Aaron wasn’t allowed to see, for obvious reasons. He was only given the information he was allowed to know: Steph was a runner. She continuously gave her handlers the slip and managed to get as far away as a different state before she was tracked down and had to be given another protection identity. She had been under Witness Protection for only a year, but proved to be the hardest witness they had.
“Your job was to read people, to find things out about them just by their behavior,” the second agent explained. “We think you’ll be able to help us to stop her from running.”
“What about my son?” Aaron asked. The last thing he wanted to do right now was to leave Jack all by himself, especially with Mr. Scratch still out there looking for the two of them.
“We'll watch him until you return,” the agent responded. “It’ll only take a month, maybe two. If the two months comes to pass and she’s still trying to make a run for it, we’ll bring you back here to Jack.”
Aaron thought it over for a while before deciding, “Okay, I’ll help.”
Aaron was almost shocked to see Steph chained to the fridge in her safe house. According to the agents, she was recently recovered from another run attempt, however instead of moving her to yet another safe house, they handcuffed her to the fridge of the last house she was in while her newest handler watched her.
She looked annoyed. She was staying down her handler, who was paying as little attention to her as possible. She kept pulling at the handcuffs, Aaron could tell she had been doing this for a while as her wrist was starting to become red and raw.
When the two agents entered with Aaron, her attention snapped to them.
“Welcome back, agents!” she responded with mock enthusiasm. “Did you bring me a new friend? I’m so glad you did, Paul here is becoming a bore already. Hi there, I’m Steph, but you have to refer to me as Diana as that’s my newest Witness Protection name.”
“He’s not here to watch you,” one of the agents informed Steph. “He’s also under Witness Protection. We’ve brought him here until a handler can be assigned to him.”
Aaron told the agents on the ride over that it would be best if they didn’t tell Steph what their true intentions with bringing him there were. If she knew that Aaron was there to observe her, she’d make sure to act differently as to throw them off.
“Really?” Steph asked. “And you brought him here with me? With my track record. Yeah, have fun with that guys.” She addressed Aaron as she asked, “Don’t know what you know about me, but I won’t be around too long.”
Aaron nodded but didn’t say anything. He noticed she was very comfortable in this situation, with talking to the agents the way she was. They were supposed to be guarding her life, although obviously she didn’t care all that much if she kept running away.
The current handler, Paul, stood from where he was sat and approached Steph. “I’m going to uncuff you, but only so you can show our guest where he’ll be staying. You make a run for it, he’ll call for us. Right?”
Steph rolled her eyes. “I suppose I could stick around long enough to help the new guy settle in. This can be his place when I make my grand disappearing act again.”
She stood from the floor, rubbing at her sore wrist, before turning to Aaron. “Come with me, new guy, I’ll show you where you’ll be staying.”
She didn’t wait to see if he was following her, not that she could’ve gone far while he wasn’t. The house was a small, single level, two bedroom house, small enough to go unnoticed by anyone but big enough for the two people who were staying there.
Steph brought him into the living room and made a grand gesture to the couch. “This is your luxurious bedroom where you’ll be staying. The couch folds out to a not very comfortable bed, but unfortunately that’s the only kind of accommodations we can offer you in this small ass house, so for your benefit I hope you find a handler very soon.”
“Thank you,” Aaron said with a nod.
“It’s whatever,” Steph shrugged. “It’ll be kind of cool to have someone around who’s not a boring ass agent.”
“Even if you’re not staying around that long?” Aaron asked.
Steph’s slightly smile quickly fell. “Yeah, yeah even if I won’t be around long.”
She left the room without another word and Aaron noticed something else about her - behind her uncaring and sarcastic façade was just a hint of something else: fear.
That night Aaron was sat on the couch in Steph’s safe house. When he was taken away, he didn’t get a lot of time to take anything personal or valuable from his house. The one thing he did manage to take, however, was a picture of himself, Jack, and his ex-wife, Haley.
Even after he had gotten into other relationships following Haley’s death, it had always been his favourite picture, because it reminded him of happier times. A time when Jack was still little, when Aaron’s job hadn’t taken over his life, when he and Haley were happy. He missed her more than anything. Haley was his first true love, and he absolutely regretted letting anything get between them, especially his job, which ended up being the reason for Haley’s death.
“What are you looking at?”
Aaron looked up to see Steph standing at the doorway between the kitchen and the living room. She was wearing a tank top and a pair of pyjama pants. She was carrying two beers in her hand. She flopped down on the couch next to Aaron and offered him one.
“Who’s that?” she asked, nodding to the picture in Aaron’s hand.
“My ex-wife and our son,” Aaron responded.
“How recent of an ex?” Steph asked. “Is she the reason why you’re under protection?”
“No,” Aaron responded. “She...she died a few years ago. Murdered by a serial killer, he called himself The Boston Reaper.”
“Shit,” Steph said. “That’s rough, I’m so sorry. Does that have anything to do with why you’re in protection? Is he back for revenge? If so, I wouldn’t let myself be in protection. I’d beat the shit out of him.”
Aaron offered Steph a small smile. “I already did. I killed him that day.”
Steph nodded, impressed, and offered the neck of her beer to Aaron. He tapped his bottle against hers and they both took a long swig.
“You’re still here,” Aaron noticed. “Waiting for everyone to go to bed?”
“No,” Steph responded. “I haven’t planned out my latest escape yet. Even if I did, why would I tell you? Not only did you tell Paul earlier that you’d let them know if I ran, but I know for certain that you yourself are an agent.” Aaron opened his mouth to protest, but she quickly cut him off, “Please, you scream FBI agent. You’re all serious and down to business, much like the assholes that look over me. I knew from the moment you walked in that you’re not here to be protected, you’re here to do the protecting.”
There was a moment of silence while Steph challenged Aaron to tell her different. When he didn’t, she tipped her head back and chugged the rest of the contents in her beer bottle. When it was all gone, she stood from the couch and started towards the kitchen.
“I am in Witness Protection,” Aaron said, causing Steph to freeze in place and turn to look at him. “And I’m not an FBI agent anymore, for that reason. I was put in protection a few weeks ago, myself and my son. Another killer is after the two of us, one that I managed to escape from years ago. He started stalking my son and we had to leave to be safe.” Steph crossed her arms and opened her mouth to ask why he was telling her all this. He cut her off by saying, “I just wanted to tell you that we didn’t completely lie to you earlier.”
Aaron wondered if Steph would use this moment to bolt. If she did, he wouldn’t have the time to alert Paul and also run after her. He’d have to chose one or the other, and either way she’d be long gone before either men could properly catch her and bring her back. He was preparing for her to run, but was surprised when she approached the couch again and sat next to him.
“Why did you tell me that?” she asked. “I mean why did you go into so much detail? You could’ve just said that wasn’t a lie.”
“I figured if I told you my story, maybe you’d tell me yours,” Aaron responded. “I’ve only been told that you were put in protection a year ago, and that you’ve been running from your handlers ever since.”
Steph scoffed. “And why do you care what my story is?”
“Maybe then I’ll be able to figure out what’s been causing you to keep fleeing. You can learn a lot about a person just from one simple story.”
Steph looked at Aaron for a long time, deciding if she should tell him or not. She pulled her knees up against her chest and hugged them to her, looking like an innocent child as opposed to a grown woman.
She went into her story, telling Aaron about how she ended up needing protection: her boyfriend of nearly three years turned out to be a member of one of the most dangerous gangs. She found this out early on in their relationship, but he assured her that all he did was run drugs for the gang, he wasn’t involved in any of the other horrible things that the gang did. Foolishly, she believed him, until one day she was walking down an empty street and heard a screaming from an alley way. When she went to investigate, she saw her boyfriend standing over three dead bodies with the gun in his hand.
“I ran,” she concluded. “Went to my friend’s house and called the police. They took him and whoever was at his house at the time into custody, but there was still a large amount of gang members out there, ready to come after me. So, they took me and put me into Witness Protection. That was a year ago, they still haven't found all the gang members. I still receive threatening messages from private numbers on my phone every now and then, no matter how many times I get a new phone with a new number.”
“Is that why you keep running?” Aaron asked.
Steph raised an eyebrow. “I thought you were supposed to be able to guess that from my story.”
“I think that’s part of it, but I feel like there’s something else to it.”
Steph sighed. “Yeah, there is. I....I went to see him once before I was put into Witness Protection. A stupid decision, I know, but I just wanted to see him one last time. Closure or something, you know? I didn’t tell him I was being put in Witness Protection, but I did tell him that I was going to have an officer with me at all times to keep me safe, but he told me that wouldn’t be a problem because apparently they have people in the police. Obviously he wouldn’t tell me who, but he said I would never truly be safe.” She wouldn’t meet Aaron’s eye. “That’s why I keep running. I don’t know if the handlers that are sent are on his side or not. I just keep hoping they’ll stop coming after me and let me be.”
“It’s their job to protect you,” Aaron told her.
“But how can you feel comfortable and safe when you don’t know if the next person walking through the door is going to be someone that works for your ex-boyfriend?”
Aaron could understand her worry. She wasn’t just trying to get away, she was trying to stay safe. She was afraid for her life and she didn’t know who she could trust. In her head, she was alone in the world and her only option was to run.
Aaron reached a hand out to touch Steph’s hand. She looked up at him and he noticed for the first time that she had tears in her eyes.
“For as long as I’m being protected, I’ll be here to protect you,” he told her. “Even when I’m free to go home, I’m a former FBI agent, I know how to protect people. As long as you promise not to run anymore.”
Steph looked at Aaron for a long moment in shock. He was starting to think she was going to turn down his offer, which he’d also understand. He had only just met her a few hours earlier, she wasn’t sure if she could trust him just yet or not.
However, Steph shocked Aaron by climbing onto his lap and starting to kiss him deeply. At first, he started to pull away, sure that it was wrong for two under Witness Protection to engage in any sort of relations, but after a moment he calmed into the kiss, allowing himself to enjoy it. He wrapped his arms around Steph, kissing her back with just as much passion. Steph’s hands started moving to his shirt, trying to take it off him, when they both heard the bedroom door open.
Just as fast as she was on his lap, Steph was sat back on the couch next to him. A sheepish Paul exited the room and looked between the two.
“How may I help you, good sir?” Steph asked in a sarcastic tone.
“Just came to get a drink of water. Didn’t mean to disrupt anything,” Paul responded before moving to the kitchen.
Steph leaned close to Aaron to whisper, “He really came out to make sure I was still here. By the way, if you hadn’t noticed, that was me taking you up on your offer. And this - ” She pointed between them, “ - is to be continued.”
She stood from the couch and went to her room. Suddenly, Aaron wasn’t dreading his situation as much.
