FRAGMENTS OF A LONELY TIDE [masterlist]
dockworker!bucky barnes x mermaid!reader
— ⟢ SUMMARY: a grumpy dockworker reluctantly rescues you—a stranded, wounded mermaid—with every intention of sending you back to the sea once you’ve healed. until the idea of losing you becomes something he can no longer bear.
— ⟢ GENERAL WARNINGS: 18+ MDNI; bucky’s in his 40s; grumpy!bucky (starts off rude and cold); protective!bucky; sunshine!reader; injuries & blood; angst; loneliness; temporary feelings denial; mutual pining; heavy yearning; domestic fluff; smut. each part has its own specific warnings.
A/N: this was originally supposed to be a one-shot part of a collection inspired by that picture of seb up there, but the plot got a little out of hand. and honestly? I don’t feel like cutting scenes just to fit tumblr’s ridiculous 1000-block limit. so here we are! hope you’ll enjoy 🌊
the art of devotion masterlist
⤷ PARTS
༄.° PART 1
༄.° PART 2
༄.° PART 3
important notes: this series will have its own dedicated taglist! that being said, I’ll also be tagging my general bucky barnes taglist, so if you’d like to be notified about all of my bucky-related fics rather than just this series, that option is available too. if you are interested, please read this post here first!
Bobby's been a shit boyfriend for months. When you disappear through a wall in the basement of Clark's furniture store, you wake up in the Backrooms, where a better version of Bobby is waiting. One who actually shows up, one who loves you, one who never, ever wants to let you go.
Summary: In which Aerion's short T-shirt causes unrest. Warnings: SMUT.
You remembered the winter well. Aerion Targaryen had let his blond hair grow out, and he'd stalked through the December slush in that striking red coat with the matching red buttons, looking like some fallen prince. He'd been insufferable about it too, preening just enough that you'd wanted to push him into a snowbank, but never quite crossing into outright vanity. That was his talent, you thought. Making extravagance look like effortlessness.
Now it was barely June, and some cruel god had decided to turn the city into an oven.
The heat had been building for days: that thick, dry kind of heat that clung to your skin and made the air feel like breathing through sand. You'd texted Aerion that morning with a single sweaty-faced emoji and nothing else, and he'd replied with a photo of his coffee and the words don't die before I get there.
So when your apartment door clicked open (he had a key, because of course he did, because Aerion Targaryen had bulldozed through every boundary you'd ever tried to set within the first three months of knowing him), you were sprawled on the couch in nothing but a pair of cotton shorts and an old band t-shirt you'd cut the sleeves off of. The oscillating fan was doing absolutely nothing except pushing warm air around the room.
"Tell me you brought ice," you said without opening your eyes.
"I brought me."
His voice was low, familiar, with that particular rasp that always made something in your chest tighten. You heard the jingle of keys being dropped into the bowl by the door, the soft thud of shoes being kicked off, and then footsteps approaching.
You opened your eyes.
Aerion Targaryen stood at the foot of your couch, and he looked like a problem. A very specific, very distracting kind of problem.
The white t-shirt he wore was simple enough at first glance: good fabric, obviously quality, the kind of cotton that was soft rather than stiff, draping rather than clinging. There was something written on it in red, blocky letters you didn't bother to read because your gaze had already slipped lower. The shirt wasn't exactly a crop top, you'd have made fun of him mercilessly if it was, but it was short. Shorter than it should have been. Shorter than any of his other shirts, certainly.
He straightened his back, probably to stretch after the walk from his car, and that was when you saw it.
A portion of his stomach. A sliver of skin just above the waistband of his jean shorts. And below that, a faint trail of pale hair starting just below his navel and disappearing down beneath the denim.
The jeans shorts were also short. Not obscenely so, not high-waisted like a preschooler's as he'd once mockingly described a pair you'd tried on at a vintage store, but short enough that they sat low on his hips. Short enough that they did absolutely nothing to cover the gap of skin his t-shirt had left exposed.
Aerion caught you staring. Of course he did.
There was a moment, just a fraction of a second, where his expression shifted from casual to something sharper and pleased. His lips curved into that lopsided grin you'd grown helplessly addicted to over the past year and a half, the one that made him look less like a rich asshole and more like a very pretty boy who knew exactly what he was doing.
He stepped closer, and his hand came up to your jaw, long fingers cool against your overheated skin, thumb brushing along your cheekbone, and he murmured, "There's my baby."
The kiss was slow. His mouth tasted like the coffee he'd shown you. You leaned into it automatically, your hand coming up to rest against his chest, and you felt him smile against your lips before he pulled back.
His thumb swiped across your lower lip, and he glanced down at the faint smudge of color now staining his skin.
"Ruined," he observed, with absolutely no remorse.
You should have grumbled. You usually did. You usually made some comment about how expensive that lip combo was, how he owed you a new tube, how he was a menace to your makeup collection.
But today you couldn't stop staring at his stomach.
The patch of skin between the hem of his shirt and the waistband of his shorts. The way the faint muscles of his abdomen shifted when he breathed. The trail of pale hair that led downward like a road map to somewhere you'd visited many times before but somehow couldn't stop thinking about.
Aerion moved past you toward the kitchen, probably to get water, probably to give you a moment to collect yourself, and as he passed, his hand swatted your backside with casual, proprietary ease.
You didn't complain. You never forgot to complain.
"Aerion."
He paused, turning back with an eyebrow raised. He'd already opened your refrigerator and was leaning down to examine its contents, which meant his shirt rode up even further, which meant you could see more of his lower back now too, and...
"You little slut," you said.
His eyebrow climbed higher.
"Sorry?" But he wasn't sorry. He was grinning.
"Who are you showing this much skin for?" You gestured vaguely at his entire midsection. "It's June second. The heat index is ninety-seven. You look like you're about to film a music video."
Aerion straightened up slowly on purpose, and closed the refrigerator without taking anything out. He turned to face you fully, and then, with the casual grace of someone who had never once felt self-conscious in his entire life, he stretched his arms over his head.
The shirt rode up. Way up.
The hem pulled past his navel, past the trail of hair, past the sharp lines of his hip bones. You could see the bottom of his rib cage. You could see the way his abdominal muscles tensed with the stretch. You could see...
"It's just a T-shirt," he said, dropping his arms and letting the fabric fall back into place. His voice was innocent. His eyes were not. "It's hot outside." He paused, tilting his head. "Just like you're wearing shorts. What's the difference?"
"The difference," you said, proud of how steady your voice came out, "is that my shorts cover my entire ass and go to my thighs."
"Debatable."
"Aerion."
He crossed the room and dropped onto the couch beside you, close enough that his thigh pressed against yours. The heat of him, already running warm, always running warm, seeped through the thin fabric of your shorts.
"Baby," he said, and his voice had dropped an octave, gone velvety in that way that made your stomach flip. "If you keep staring at me there like that, I'll think a miracle has happened."
"What miracle?"
"That you want to blow me."
You swatted his chest, and he caught your wrist before you could pull away, laughing low in his throat. His grip was loose, easy, his thumb rubbing circles against your pulse point.
"I'm serious," he said. "You've been looking at my stomach for approximately four straight minutes. You haven't blinked. I was starting to get concerned for your ocular health."
"I was thinking."
"About my stomach."
"About how you're a slut."
"Mm." He released your wrist and leaned back against the couch cushions, and you thought that would be the end of it, that he'd tease you for a few more minutes and then suggest ordering food or watching something or doing any of the normal things couples did on sweltering June afternoons.
Instead, he lay down.
Right there on your couch, on his back, one arm tucked behind his head. His shirt exposing his stomach completely, the pale expanse of skin, the faint lines of muscle, that trail of hair you couldn't stop thinking about. And then, as if that wasn't enough, he jutted his hips upward slightly. Like a dog awaiting a belly rub.
You stared at him.
He stared back, his expression somewhere between smug and hopeful.
"You're ridiculous," you said.
"You love it."
"I love you. There's a difference."
His face softened at that, just for a moment, just a flicker, before the smugness returned. "Then prove it. Come here."
You should have resisted. You should have made him work for it, made him beg a little, made him regret wearing that godsforsaken shirt that had been designed specifically to destroy your sanity.
Instead, you leaned down.
Your lips brushed the spot just below his navel, the beginning of his happy trail, and you felt his stomach muscles jump beneath your mouth. His skin was warm, slightly salty. You pressed a second kiss there, softer this time, and then a third, trailing down just a fraction of an inch.
You didn't unzip his shorts.
Above you, Aerion made a sound, something between a groan and a laugh, and his hands came up to grip your thighs. His fingers were warm through your cotton shorts, squeezing, kneading, inching upward.
"Come here," he said again, but this time it wasn't a request.
He pulled you down on top of him with enough force that you had to catch yourself with your hands on either side of his head. One of his hands stayed on your thigh. The other slinked down, past the hem of your shorts, past the elastic of your underwear, and his fingers found wetness. Not a little, not just damp. Wet.
Aerion's eyebrows rose. His lips curved. He didn't pull his hand away; instead, he pressed slightly, just enough to feel you through the fabric of your underwear.
"What's this?" he murmured. His thumb brushed against you, light as a whisper. "Playing hard to get when you're this wet already? That's not very nice, princess."
You should have let him believe it. You should have let him think he'd done this to you, that his stupid shirt and his stupid stomach and his stupid smug face had turned you into this: aching, wanting, slick with need.
But you were also honest to a fault, and Aerion knew you too well for lies anyway.
"No," you said, and your voice came out breathier than you wanted it to. "No, babe, it's...that's not..."
"Not what?"
"It's just discharge." You felt your face heat. "From ovulating. It's not...It's just what happens everyday when ovulating."
For a moment, Aerion just looked at you. Then he laughed with genuine, delighted amusement. His hand stayed where it was, fingers still pressed against your damp underwear, and his hips shifted beneath you in a way that you felt everywhere.
"Doesn't ovulation phase mean increased horniness?" he asked, tilting his head. "I read that somewhere. Heightened libido, increased attraction?"
"That's not..." you started.
"I'm just saying. Seems like convenient timing."
You snorted. "That's not how it works. While libido could spike around ovulation due to hormonal shifts, it's not a guarantee, and discharge is not the same thing as arousal. I would know because this week my body..."
"Baby." He cut you off with a gentle squeeze of his fingers. "I love when you talk biology to me. Truly. It's one of my favorite things about you." His hips rolled upward again, and you could feel him now, half-hard beneath his shorts, pressing against your core through layers of fabric. "But I don't care why you're wet. I care that you are."
"Aerion..."
"Sit down." His voice was soft but certain. "Ride me."
"We're on the couch."
"The couch is fine." He pulled at your hips, guiding you more firmly against him. His eyes were bright, almost playful.
"There's no...we don't have any..."
He reached into the back pocket of his shorts and pulled out a condom. Held it up between two fingers like a winning lottery ticket.
"You carry those with you?"
"I carry one with me." He tucked it back into his pocket. "For emergencies."
"You're such a..."
"Ride me," he said again, and his hand slipped out of your shorts just long enough to undo the button, to pull down the zipper, to push the denim down his thighs. "Come on. I'll let you punish me for the slutty top you pretend to hate."
"I don't pretend to..."
"You've been staring at my stomach for five minutes."
"Four."
"Six, now." He grabbed your hips and guided you, shifted you until you were straddling him properly. His cock pressed against the damp cotton of your underwear, hot and heavy, and you couldn't help the way your hips rolled forward.
"There she is," he murmured. "There's my girl."
His hand slipped back into your shorts, into your underwear this time, no fabric barrier between his fingers and your skin. He found you slick and ready and wanting, despite everything you'd said about biology and discharge.
"You feel that?" he asked, and his fingers circled your clit once, twice, watching your face as your breath caught. "You can call it whatever you want. Discharge. Ovulation. Biological imperative." He pressed deeper, one finger sliding inside you with embarrassing ease. "But this? The way you're gripping my fingers? That's not biology. That's me."
You couldn't argue. You couldn't speak. His finger curled inside you and his thumb pressed against your clit and his other hand was unzipping his shorts the rest of the way, pushing them down, kicking them off entirely.
He pulled his fingers out of you, you made a sound of protest that you'd deny later, his fingers were slick, and he brought them to his mouth without thinking, or maybe with too much thinking, and sucked them clean. He reached for the condom in his pocket. Ripped it open with his teeth, which should have been ridiculous but wasn't, wasn't at all.
"Come here," he said for the third time.
You leaned down, and he kissed you, deep and hungry, licking into your mouth like he was trying to taste every part of you at once. His tongue swept against yours, and his hands guided your hips, and beneath you, he nudged the head of his cock against your entrance.
"Atta girl," he breathed against your lips.
And then he pushed inside.
You both groaned, you from the stretch, him from the heat. Your fingers curled into his shoulders.
His shirt had ridden up even further, pressed between your bodies, and you could feel his stomach against yours, warm skin on warm skin, that trail of hair brushing your navel. You looked down at him, at the flush spreading across his cheekbones, at the way his lips had parted, at the blond hair spread across your couch cushions.
"There's my baby," he said again, softer this time.
You started to move.
His hands guided you, showing you the rhythm, the pace, and you let him, because you trusted him, because you wanted this, because despite all your protests about slutty tops and biology and the sweltering June heat, there was nowhere else you'd rather be.
The couch creaked beneath you. The fan whirred uselessly.
"That's it. Just like that. You feel so good. So good, baby."
Your thighs burned. Sweat slicked the back of your neck. His hands moved from your hips to your waist to your breasts, pushing up your shirt, palming your skin.
"You're so beautiful," he said, and he sounded almost surprised by it, even now, even after all this time. "Riding me on your cheap couch in your cheap apartment, and you're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."
"Aerion..."
"I mean it." His hips snapped upward, driving deeper, and you gasped. "I'm going to marry you someday."
"Don't...ah...don't propose to me while you're inside me."
"Fine." He grinned, sharp and lovely. "I'll wait until I'm outside you."
You kissed him to shut him up, or maybe just because you wanted to, because his mouth was warm and familiar and his tongue tasted like coffee and forever. He groaned into the kiss and his hands slid down to grip your ass, helping you move, setting a rhythm that made your vision blur at the edges.
The couch springs protested. The afternoon light slanted through the blinds, painting stripes across his pale skin. His hips snapped up to meet yours, over and over, and his breath came hot against your cheek.
"Close," he muttered. "Baby, I'm close."
You nodded, couldn't speak, could barely think. Your fingers dug into his shoulders and your head fell back and you chased your own release.
He reached between your bodies, his thumb finding your clit, pressing hard, that was all it took.
You came with a sound you'd be embarrassed about later, your body clenching around him, your vision blacking out. He followed a moment after, hips stuttering, a low groan torn from his throat.
For a moment, neither of you moved. Then Aerion laughed breathlessly and pulled you down against his chest. His heart pounded beneath your ear, slowly evening out. His fingers traced lazy patterns on your back.
"That was," he said, "a very productive ovulatory phase."
"Shut up."
"The egg didn't go to waste after all."
"I said shut up."
He laughed again, and you hid your smile against his skin, his stomach, where your cheek rested now.
"You're staring again," he said.
"I'm laying."
"You're staring at my stomach while laying on it. I can feel your eyes."
"You can't feel eyes, Aerion."
"I can feel your eyes." He pressed a kiss to the top of your head. "Lucky for you, I wore the slutty top."
"Lucky for you," you mumbled into his skin, "I was ovulating."
His laugh was worth the embarrassment. It always was. He held you against his chest, his too-short shirt rucked up around his ribs, looking at you like he'd won something. Maybe he had. You certainly weren't complaining.
a/n: Liked the fic? You can donate on Ko-fi, your support helps me write more: https://ko-fi.com/catbayunthestoryteller <3
genre : s11 hotch, competence and authority kink, lots of tension, political scheming as foreplay, pretentious as usual
summary : There is no particular advantage in behaving well when dealing with Aaron Hotchner. It only makes it easier for him to assume you will stay predictable. You have no intention of obliging that assumption. And he has begun to recalibrate his depth to match the wreckage you’ve set in motion. After all, if he’s going to be the anchor, the least you can do is make sure he gets wet.
notes : i finally finished this after reaching a state of locking in that can only come from procrastinating serious academic work. huge thank you to @ssa-dado for basically being the co-pilot for my brain. this story wouldn't have half its heart (or its floor plan) without you. <3
word count : 8.9k
Many have held the opinion, and still do, that there is a specific, clinical sort of sobriety that follows an act of profound indiscretion.
It isn’t as simple as a hangover, and it’s far more insulting than mere regret.
Few spectacles are more pitiful and strange than a calculated descent into the water that ends with you pinned and manhandled by a loser in government-issued swim trunks.
You can reframe it as impulse. Blame anatomy. Call it strategy gone momentarily soft (or hard?).
The chlorine still stings.
To write something useful for discerning minds, it would be more fitting to seek the truth of the matter rather than imaginary conceptions where you would have actually gotten to taste the salt on Hotchner’s neck or map the silver hairs of his chest with your tongue.
The elevator ride down to the maintenance level is a silent meditation on the necessity of graft and the manner of pretending you have never once been wet or breathless in a building facility.
Grant is a man of limited horizons, which makes him remarkably easy to manage, if somewhat tedious to tolerate. Unlike Arthur—the doorman—, Grant lacks the imagination for true craftiness. You don’t want him to be more complicated than that.
Arthur understands the artifice behind a folded bill. He treats every confidence as a counterfeit coin, held until the hour of the greatest trade, when the desperation of others makes it gold.
By contrast, Grant is merely a man who enjoys the payout. To him, a bribe is just a line on a ledger he keeps in his head. A mechanical exchange devoid of the “professional courtesy” that makes Arthur so reliable.
You get the distinct impression that Grant likely approaches sex the same way. Entirely forgettable and with his eyes firmly fixed on the clock until the job is done.
If you didn’t already sound maladjusted, you certainly do now. Speculating about the sexual stamina of a building superintendent in a damp basement. It’s a symptom, clearly. Of needing to get laid. Urgently.
Even more so when the moment you think of a ‘release’ your mind goes to Hotchner. You find yourself wondering if he’s as disciplined in the dark as he is in the light (or maybe he’s a real freak who insists on being able to see everything). The way he had you pressed against him, all steady hands and immovable intent. You think he’d be looking at you instead of the clock. Precise, patient, eager.
Maybe they’re doing a deal on vibrators for spring.
The transaction is brief. You place the envelope into Grant’s dull, expectant palm with sterile efficiency — this month’s ‘consultation fee’ for your little alcove. It disappears into his desk with practiced ease. A man of few words and even fewer scruples.
He briefly asks about the campaign with a pointed look that clearly spells out ‘Should I start looking for another job?’.
It’s a fair question. You’d say your relationship is a sort of symbiotic parasitism — both of you feed on the building’s decay. But you can survive the death of the host. Sure, it’d be a pain in the ass, but you’d work around Rosen’s grandiose bullshit if he did win. Grant, however, is rooted. He can’t move his pension to the boiler room.
“Don’t spend it all in one place,” you tell him.
If you were worried about the campaign, you wouldn’t be making jokes about his pocket money.
You press the elevator button and watch the doors slide open.
There is a restorative boredom in descending to a place where your influence is a matter of simple arithmetic. Where men take what you hand them and ask no further questions.
The doors close. Grant stays.
There’s probably some stupidly convenient metaphor in there.
The symbolism of the ride is quickly shoved aside for something much more literal. Taped to the side wall is one of Rosen’s campaign posters. His face, earnest and painfully collegiate, stares back at you. Or it would have, if someone hadn’t gotten busy with a black sharpie.
“DUMB CUNT” scrawled in blocky letters and a dick drawn across his forehead (they even took the time to include the veins).
It’s crude, honestly ugly and absolutely delightful. You can’t help but appreciate such a loud and public middle finger. It has a certain vulgar integrity that the rest of this place usually lacks.
At the lobby, the elevator chimes a bright, clinical sound that cuts through your admiration of the hairs on the sharpie balls.
Hotchner is there, charcoal suit compressing his frame under layers of professional-grade stoicism and cotton. This particular shade of gray really suits him. The color of a cell. Like a man who has built a fortress of rules around himself. You find a sick pleasure in knowing you’re currently rattling the lock of his cage (are you?).
Standing beside him is David Rosen. The color of his suit irrelevant.
They aren’t talking. They’re standing two feet apart, radiating a mutual prosecutorial coldness.
You see Rosen’s expression shift from silent jurisdictional contest (which is really just a well-tailored dick-measuring exercise) to civic seduction the moment he notices you.
Rosen’s smile is a polished, terrifying thing (it’s not really. it just sounds better that way). The kind of expression a man wears when he’s about to ask for your vote or your indictment. There’s a slight tension in his jaw, his eyes firmly set on yours, refusing to track upward toward the inked dick crowning his forehead.
“Good evening,” he greets you politely. He knows acknowledging the penis in the room would only give the vandal a seat at the table. So instead, he leans into the absurdity. “I was just telling Aaron here that we’re hosting a small trial night for the restaurant in a couple of weeks. I’d love for you to come.”
Aaron is a currency Rosen doesn’t actually hold, yet he spends it freely anyway to suggest a familiarity that isn't there. It’s like he’s picking Hotchner’s pockets, stripping away his robes of office, turning him into a mere neighbor.
There’s a reason you call him Hotchner.
Aaron would be too domestic, too soft—it would imply you’ve already won, or worse, that you’re his equal in a way that bores you. Hotchner preserves the distance a proper siege requires. It keeps him on a pedestal so that when you finally knock him off, the tumble is much more spectacular. Also, he’s definitely earned the mouthful of his name.
Hotchner doesn’t flinch at Rosen’s informality. He doesn’t correct him. That would be defensive, insecure. And Hotchner is never defensive.
He simply offers you a cordial nod.
A minimal gesture. Poised. Efficient. Utterly proprietary.
“Sure,” you answer casually.
Rosen turns slightly toward you. To suggest that you are, currently, the more relevant audience, without excluding Hotchner either.
“We’re bringing in a chef from New York,” he says. “It’s called Pisellone. Nothing permanent yet, just an opportunity for everyone to see what the space could be.”
There’s a moment—brief but nonetheless significant—where you consider the possibility that this entire campaign is an elaborate practical joke.
You glance at Hotchner.
Nothing.
Not even one of his stupidly restrained twitches. There isn’t the faintest suggestion that he is aware he is currently standing in an elevator being pitched a restaurant named, essentially, large pea(nis).
Of course he isn’t.
Hotchner does not live in a world where things are accidentally obscene. Everything is either intentional or irrelevant. And since Rosen said it with a straight face, it must be the latter.
“The building has potential,” he adds. “It just hasn’t been fully… realized.”
Unrealized. It’s a careful word. One that flatters the listener by insinuating they deserve more.
He doesn’t oversell it. That’s what makes it effective. He lets the implications do the work.
You hum lightly, as if considering it.
Mostly to keep your mouth occupied. Because if you open it, there’s a very real risk you might ask him if the tasting menu comes with a measuring tape or if they expect you to just take their word for it and open wide. (not that men have ever been particularly honest about dimensions.)
“Initial feedback has been positive,” Rosen continues, mistaking your silence for interest rather than restraint. “Small scale but very well received.”
Obviously. It takes a certain caliber of balls to tell an obnoxious chef to his face that the peas taste like shit.
Hotchner tilts his head slightly, neutral but deliberate. “Reception can be misleading. People are polite when they don’t want to offend.”
Didn’t you just say that ?
Here he is, the great moral arbiter of The Florentine, plucking the cynicism right out of your hands and presenting it as his own.
It’s offensive. And lazy. Also it’s the most intimate thing he’s done yet (besides having his tongue down your throat).
Get your own jokes, loser.
Rosen leans just slightly, a smooth smile tugging at his lips. “I’ve found that most people are actually quite hungry for something real,” he says. “They just need someone to set the table.”
There’s a subtle shift in his posture when he says it. It feels… practiced. Like he’s used to rooms where people don’t agree with him immediately. Used to winning them anyway.
Rosen’s gaze returns to you. “What do you think?” he asks.
There it is. The real question. He’s not asking about the restaurant, about policy or logistics. He’s asking about your alignment.
Hotchner tilts his head, barely perceptible, eyes flicking to you. Just enough to note the slight pull at the corner of your mouth.
“I’m not sure,” you say pensively.
To rise to the highest floor, you have to become the counterweight—silent and unseen— falling quietly so something else can be lifted. No one interferes with a destination they can’t see.
“I hope you’ll give it a fair look,” he says easily. “That’s all I’m asking.”
A fair look. As if all three of you aren’t currently engaged in a silent, collective agreement to look anywhere but his forehead.
“That shouldn’t be too hard to do,” you reply.
Hotchner’s eyes flick briefly to the poster, then back to you.
His stare is meticulous, slow, assessing. Every tiny twitch, every inflection in your posture seems catalogued and weighed. He’s searching for something. Tracing the ink he’s convinced is staining your conscience.
There’s the faintest hint of a smile, a ghost of amusement. But it doesn’t reach his eyes. He doesn’t just look at you: he dissects you. It’s the kind of heavy, unyielding focus that suits an interrogation room.
And yet, it’s ridiculous how much it turns you on. It’s hot, but also absurdly entertaining. You consider flipping him off just to see how he’d categorize your middle finger in his meticulous little mental file.
Rosen lets out a small breath, like that mattered more than he expected.
There’s a brief, unguarded hesitation before he answers.
“I’m glad,” he says. “I’d rather you see it than just take my word for it.”
(…)
Earnest. Or cowardly. You suppose the distinction depends on the outcome of the election.
You think that this ride is taking a strangely long time. Like the internal mechanics have decided to synchronize with the social friction inside the elevator.
This all feels like a very awkward threesome. The kind where no one is horny (debatable), everyone is fully clothed and there’s a PowerPoint presentation on ‘Optimal Positions and Angles for Mutual Satisfaction’.
You’re still trying to figure out if this counts as foreplay or a hostage situation.
The doors slide open with a soft chime.
No one’s unzipping anything after all.
You step out first.
Behind you, Rosen offers a parting remark. Something smooth and courteous, entirely forgettable in its exact wording but precise in its intention. An open door disguised as good manners.
As the elevator begins to hiss shut, you catch one last glimpse of him. He stands perfectly straight, a cordial smile on his lips, chin tilted with a touch of DC gallantry (you don’t suppose he’s aiming the charm at Hotchner).
It’s almost moving, in a pathetic way. Like watching a captain determined to go down with his sinking ship (technically the elevator is moving up towards the 4th floor but who’s keeping track of that), proudly facing the horizon while the hull is so clearly compromised.
He holds himself with rigid, upright dignity, helming a vessel that’s currently more shaft than ship.
A memorable mast, at least.
Hotchner doesn’t move right away. He stands there, still, as if replaying the last few seconds and adjusting for variables.
Then he looks at you.
“You’re very creative.”
He doesn’t say it like a compliment. He says it the way a judge reads a verdict. Heavy and final and devoid of any room for appeal.
It’s a fascinating habit of his. Every observation he makes about you sounds less like an opinion and more like a formal conviction. He doesn’t think you’re creative. He’s reviewed the evidence, consulted whatever statutes govern human behavior and pronounced you guilty of the charge.
He stands there, his hand casually resting on his hip (the leather of his belt pulls just enough for his thumb to dig into the slight softness of his middle. his posture is somewhere between ‘he’s about to scold you for your lack of decorum’ and ‘he’s about to unbuckle his belt to give you a better model for your next act of vandalism’. both options work just fine for you), as the self-appointed authority on your character.
It’s a shame he’s so confident because he’s built his case on baseless assumptions.
“I try.”
He doesn’t blink. He’s the type of man who waits for the evidence to speak for itself. The type who takes great pride in a report built on concrete and hard facts.
He takes a slow step towards you. He smells like coffee. Faint creases at the corners of his eyes, slight folds where his tie knots around his neck. A small smile tugs at the corner of his lips. Like he’s both impartial dealer and calculated gambler.
He’s not trying to intimidate you, not exactly. But he’s trying to make you give yourself away.
“You didn’t just try,” he says calmly. “Permanent Sharpie. Fine-point. You waited for the hallway to clear, timed the cleaners’ rotation perfectly.”
He pauses for a moment. Waiting for you to give up and show your hand.
“You hit the precise spot where Rosen couldn’t ignore it without acknowledging the… anatomy. Which is exactly the sort of thing you’d find amusing,” he adds, voice low and measured, each word deliberate.
He’s guessing.
You can tell by the way he’s looking at you—with a sharp, hungry attentiveness.
He’s wound tight, his gaze narrowing as if he’s trying to physically pull a confession out of your expression. If he actually had the facts, he’d be leaning back, letting the weight of the law do the work for him.
But, he’s looming. His entire focus pinned on you with a desperate, clinical precision. That actually really suits him. Desperate enough to call your bluff without proof, just to see if you’ll fold for him.
“If I’d been the one to draw the dick,” you say lightly, “I’d at least have put it on his mouth. Might have gotten him to shut up that way.”
Hotchner blinks. Just once. He guiltily glances at your hands.
He doesn’t say anything at first. His thumb hitches against his belt.
“You’re…” he starts, then stops. Unsure if he should finish, because finishing it might acknowledge he misjudged you.
He clears his throat, his expression flattening into that familiar, deadpan mask of federal indifference. He’s trying to retreat to the moral high ground, even if the terrain is crumbling under his feet.
“He’s married,” he says clipped and precise. Like he’s citing regulation instead of answering you.
You watch him shrink back into his rules. The careful, procedural logic that always makes him feel in control. It’s the same instinctual bureaucratic modesty that keeps him buttoned-up, polite, and quietly prudish (definitely prudish). In short, tiny balls the size of peas, hiding behind a lectern of protocol.
(rich coming from a man who has one failed marriage under his belt.)
“Like no married man has ever sucked dick,” you counter.
He looks simultaneously flustered and mildly exasperated.
“Fair enough.”
You almost picture him rifling through some old 1970s Bureau handbook of Prohibited Vulgarities. Frantically trying to index your sentence. In his mind, ‘fuck’ is likely a level one infraction (worthy of a stern look and maybe a curt “let’s focus please”) while ‘dick’ is a level five breach of departmental propriety.
“My god, you’re so prudish I’d seriously consider the possibility of you being a virgin if you didn’t have a kid," you say, your voice dripping with mock-wonder.
You pause, tilting your head as if a terrifying new thought has just occurred to you. "Hold on. He is your—”
“That’s enough. You’ve made your point.”
You glance once more toward the elevator, where Rosen and his unfortunate poster have long since gone under (or over, for those keeping track).
“For the record,” you add lightly, “whoever did it has excellent artistic instincts.”
His jaw tightens. Just slightly.
You let yourself enjoy it for a second longer than necessary before turning away.
It is in the nature of things that you can never escape one set back without running into another.
“No. I won’t do that.”
The sound of crystal on wood is final. A gavel coming down. He sets his scotch glass on the desk with deliberate care.
“No ? It’s efficient. It’s clean.”
“Clean isn’t the word I’d use,” he says seriously. “It’s sanitized.”
He doesn’t elaborate.
The finality with which he says it is infuriating.
A wise counselor is the mirror wherein a ruler’s intellect takes its true form. To serve a fool is a short labor. To be bound to the wise is the mark of a power that has mastered both the court and its own nature.
But there is a specific kind of arrogance in a ruler who mistakes his own rigidity for wisdom. By clinging to the ‘cleanliness’ of his methods, Hotchner isn’t preserving the court. He’s stalling it. He’s letting a perfect opportunity rot on the vine because the soil it grew in wasn't to his liking.
It is a foolish, terminal sort of piety. The kind that leaves a man with a clean conscience and an empty throne. And the kind that’s fucking annoying.
“You’re arguing semantics ?”
He sighs. His brows furrowed into their perpetual line of tired concentration.
He takes a slow, heavy sip of his scotch. As he pulls the glass away, his tongue slips past his lips. Catching the stray, amber drops with a soft, unconscious precision.
“I’m arguing intent.”
“How is that relevant ?” you ask with an almost fascinated curiosity.
It’s a real wonder he gets anything done when he’s so focused on the sanctity of the process.
You can almost picture him in a standoff, refusing to breach the door because the search warrant’s font wasn't quite authoritative enough. Or trying to talk a serial killer into a voluntary surrender through the sheer, transformative power of friendship and a firm handshake. (did anyone tell him G-man stands for Government not Good ?)
He leans forward. His shadow stretches along the mahogany desk.
“You’re not asking me to give Mrs. Polk legal advice out of the goodness of your heart,” he says.
His voice is flat. Devoid of the heat that usually accompanies an accusation.
“You’re trying to make her dependent on the process.”
He picks up his glass again, but he doesn't drink. He just rotates it slowly watching the way the amber liquid washes up the sides like a leaden sea. “A simple favor that becomes a favor owed.”
“A ‘simple favor’ is a loose thread,” you say leaning back in the heavy leather chair across from him. You hook a thumb through one of your belt loops. “Sure, she’ll be grateful for a couple of weeks. She’ll tell the other neighbors that you were a real sweetheart. She might even get her kid to make you a nice drawing.”
Hotchner’s gaze remains fixed on the glass, his expression unreadable, though the muscle in his jaw tightens.
“But sooner or later it’ll turn to ‘that damn Hotchner thinks he’s running this ship,” you continue. “You’re the saint, she’s the charity case. Eventually, that gratitude just turns into resentment because she has no way to even the score.”
He finally looks up. His eyes are dark, hooded by the fatigue of the day, but there’s a sharp, judgmental clarity in them that feels like a tidal pressure. A finger drifts to his temple, dropping like an anchor to steady the heavy roll of his thoughts.
“It’s not about making her dependent,” you add, gesturing vaguely with one hand as if dismissing a minor technicality. “It’s about mutual necessity. You go and play wise and sexy pro-bono lawyer, she votes for you. It’s a stable knot. You both stay in the boat because if one of you rocks it, you both drown.”
At least, that’s the version that fits neatly enough to use.
He hums quietly. Runs his index along the rim of his glass. The pad of his finger drags against the crystal, catching slightly on the condensation before gliding over the smooth, cold edge.
It’s a methodical, circular motion. The kind a man makes when he’s tracing the perimeter of a problem he’s already solved. The cotton of his blue dress shirt rustles. A sharp, clean sound like a sudden swell breaking against the shore
“Is that why you spent so much time talking to Mrs. Dillon the past few days?” he asks. “Necessity?”
“I have a thing for the elderly.”
Obviously.
A tiny, incredulous huff of air escapes his nose.
You glance up at him, allowing your gaze to linger just a moment too long. Taking in the silver strands at his temples. The lines etched into his face.
There’s a quick shake of his head as though trying to dismiss the idea before he goes back to his response, not missing a beat.
“You didn’t stumble onto Mrs. Polk’s problem. You went to Mrs. Dillon to get a read on the building’s undercurrents.”
“And that’s a bad thing because…?”
This idiot is an even bigger gossip than Mrs. Dillon. He just doesn’t have the ridiculous Golden Girls perm to go with it.
“It’s a search and seizure. You’ve been auditing the neighbors, looking for a crisis you could own,” he deduces calmly.
You shrug.
You wouldn’t call this a tactical loss. You didn’t exactly have to interrogate the woman. Mrs. Dillon is already a loyal partisan.
She didn’t surrender the floor plan of Mrs. Polk’s legal misery because she’s a loose-lipped civilian. She gave it to you because she’s a weathered sentry who recognized a fellow soldier.
His finger taps one last time against the glass. The crystal glints slightly from the light of his desk lamp.
“You wouldn’t be asking me to talk to Mrs. Polk unless you were sure it would go the way you want it to,” he surmises confidently.
You hold his gaze, not flinching. There’s no hesitation, no vertigo, no mal de mer.
All things considered, this path isn’t really a surprise of Fortune, but the final sum of a ledger already written by your own hand.
“How would you make sure of that ? That you’d get the exact result you want,” he continues. He isn't looking for an answer—he’s showing you he already has it.
A part of you appreciates how neatly he’s sounded the depths of your designs. He was never going to be satisfied with the view from the surface. And that’s exactly why you chose him.
“You’d create a situation where the obvious solution fails so the alternative, me, looks necessary.”
He’s really milking this grand reveal isn’t he ? You didn’t think Hotchner had such a propensity for the theatrics yet here you are.
If he’s this committed to the drama, he might as well go all the way. Get a few wigs, play all the roles. He could be himself as the lead, then swap into a gray bob for Mrs. Dillon, and a floral headpiece for Mrs. Polk. A regular Shakespearean troupe of one.
Oh! And a pair of glasses for Rosen.
“You made Mrs. Polk go talk to Rosen first. Because you wanted to make sure he’d reject her before you even asked me.”
He leans in slightly, his fingers brushing against the edge of your chair. The fabric of his shirt straining just enough over his broad frame, the stiff collar pulling taut as his tie dangles closer to you. It brushes against your thigh.
“You knew he wouldn’t be able to help her. He’s a sitting prosecutor, he’s legally barred from consulting on private cases,” he says, his voice low and matter-of-fact, his gaze never leaving yours.
There is a flicker of recognition in his eyes. Or something close enough that you’re willing to call it that. The kind a strategist offers a rival who has finally forced them to play their best hand.
People think there’s some sort of treatise on how to come up with this sort of thing. ‘Your Magnificence, if You deign read these lowly pages, You will find all that is necessary to subjugate the people to Your will.’
Creating controlled inconvenience that resolves into order is hard fucking work. But rigidity is the precursor to failure. Even a well-crafted scheme has to be treated as disposable the moment it becomes a liability.
You let the silence stretch. Your mind racing. Recalibrating.
You cock your head and give him a genuine smile. “So what’s the situation here ? You don’t have a dick?”
His lips press together, and you see that familiar flicker of annoyance in his eyes. “This isn’t funny.”
You lean forward. “I’m serious man. Where is it?”
He lets out a long, heavy sigh—the kind of exasperated sound that seems to vibrate through his entire frame, from the collar of his shirt down to the fingers still braced against your chair.
You’re half hoping he’s going to grab your hand and shove it into his pants to prove you wrong.
“Did you leave it in your other suit?”
He leans back slightly, his shoulders straightening. His tie falls back right between his tits on his chest. His jaw tightens just enough for the sharp line of it to become more pronounced, and the muscles in his neck shift as if to hold back an angry retort. He’s trying to keep his composure, but there’s that tiny flare of frustration in his eyes.
“Is this your version of a white flag?” he asks.
You smile and grab the lower part of his tie to wave it as a makeshift flag.
To be at ease in the face of ruin is not the mark of a fool, but of one who has already trimmed the sails of their own success.
“Sure.”
You run your finger softly along the tie’s little white square pattern. Absentmindedly pulling it closer to you.
“You know, I think I have another idea. Mrs. Polk could go to Judge McNamara. In 231,” you begin. Your gaze flickers to his, testing the waters, knowing full well what you're doing. You're not really offering him a way out.
“He’s retired now. He might not be able to take on the full case, but he can point her in the right direction. It’s a safe bet for her.”
You’re offering him a solution that lets him stick to his principles while still showing Mrs. Polk that he's capable.It’s not the most elegant route but it will have to do.
The silk of his tie feels nice under your fingers. Sort of like a leash.
Hotchner looks down at your hand, his pulse visible at the hollow of his reddening throat as you keep the tie taut. He senses the trap—he has to.
He lets out a breath. A short, sharp exhale that brushes against your forehead. He doesn't pull the tie back.
“McNamara is a fair man,” he says, his voice low and cautious. As if he’s weighing the cost of agreeing to your ‘surrender’. “He’ll give her an honest assessment of the board’s bylaws. It’s a sound suggestion.”
He pauses, his hand finally coming up to cover yours. His palm is broad and warm. His skin’s slightly calloused.
His eyes search yours carefully. Amber specks caught in an undertow. He gives you a small nod and gently but firmly pulls your hand away from his tie.
It goes without saying that McNamara is very fond of Hotchner.
Observing Hotchner’s silent discipline, you wonder how easily he might be nudged — or pushed — into obedience.
But the thought is an indulgence he does not allow you to sustain. Hotchner does not move because he has been pushed. He moves because he has already decided the path is worth taking.
His presence narrows the field. You find yourself favoring only the paths that can survive his scrutiny.
Donna Fowler, in 325. And Bob Haldeman, in 314.
Two people circling a line that hasn’t yet been crossed. One foot forward, one step back. Neither willing to fully commit, neither fully restrained. You can see the path forming. You just need to lay the stones in a way that anyone can follow.
“Haldeman is still complaining about ‘excessive foot traffic’ on the 3rd floor,” you say.
In the insular, hushed ecosystem of this building, everyone knows that when Haldeman mentions the third floor, he is talking about Donna.
Donna is a defense contractor. She lives by the rigid, sterilized grace of protocol and cleared entry. Her apartment isn’t just a home, it’s an extension of her office. But to Haldeman, the mere sight of her clients in the elevator is an affront to discretion.
He treats the hallway like a private corridor of the West Wing. She treats it like a secured perimeter. Two very specific, very stubborn professional neuroses colliding — the kind only DC can produce.
Hotchner doesn’t need spelling out who’s who. What he doesn’t yet see is the opportunity.
“He’s pushing for a formal audit of the guest ledger,” you say, letting the weight of the words hang.
Your tone stays light, almost casual, but the implication is clear: this isn’t idle grumbling. Someone has escalated. Someone is trying to force the rules into action.
“If this escalates, it won’t stay contained,” you continue. “And if it doesn’t escalate… it doesn’t move.”
Neutrality feels safe—until you realize it is a standstill on a shifting road. A slow death by a thousand ‘I’ll wait for my lawyer before saying anything’.
In conflicts like these, if you don’t place your weight decisively, the path can vanish beneath you. Better to lay the stones yourself than to be tripped by the ones your enemy leaves behind.
He shifts.
He runs the pad of his thumb over his index finger. Looks down at his lap, his hand smoothing a stray crease in the dark fabric of his pants.
He isn't processing your words so much as he is weighing them against his own internal architecture. You find yourself watching the slow, steady rise of his chest.
There is a terrifyingly beautiful efficiency to him—a man who wastes no spark of energy on a reaction he hasn't already vetted.
“Haldeman is already leaning toward Rosen,” he says, and it isn't a question. He’s already mapped the political fallout. “He isn't looking for security. He’s looking for a way to use the board’s reach to satisfy a personal grievance.”
“Leaving this unresolved… it wouldn’t be fair,” he adds quietly. He’s not thinking about advantage or consequence. He’s thinking about stability, clarity, and the rules being upheld.
You notice the calculation behind his calm, the precision of his judgment. It’s weirdly fascinating, seeing the mirror image of your own intent. You’re both drawn to the same point, but you got there from opposite directions.
For the first time, you find yourselves mapping out a route you both agree on.
Donna needs a reason to seek him out
Keep it clean (meh)
He’ll only intervene if she asks him to
“She won’t come to you unless something makes her,” you test out.
The words come out a little less sharp than you would have wanted. You don't look away, but you feel the sudden, cold weight of the gamble you’re taking.
As fun as it is to call him a virgin while simultaneously propositioning him, you can’t ignore the gravity of the man. Because he’s older. Because he’s more experienced. Because when he says you’re inventive or creative, he’s not just testing out the words.
You hesitate, the silence stretching thin.
You aren’t sure if he respects you enough to meet you in the gray, or if he still sees you as something that needs to be "accounted for."
Hotchner doesn’t move. No comforting smile. No nod of encouragement. He simply watches the flicker of doubt in your eyes.
“Then whatever makes her,” he begins. His voice feels like a gentle hand steadying a fraying line. “Needs to be something I can address without escalating things.”
Relief rolls through you like a slow tide lapping at the edge of a quiet shore. Soft and steady. Enough to caress the sand beneath your feet without washing it all away.
“You don’t want to know how that happens?” you ask.
Just to make sure.
He runs his thumb over his index finger one last time.
“I don’t need to,” he decides.
You sit at your desk, pull out a plain sheet of paper, and start your first draft. You need to sound exactly like a man who peaked while chairing a subcommittee in 1998.
I see who’s coming over after midnight, Donna. One more late-night visitor and I’m telling everyone what you’re really doing behind closed doors. Kisses. -Haldeman.
You snort, leaning back in your chair and spinning the pen between your fingers. Too honest. Too ‘teenager in a black hoodie’. It sounds like you, and ‘you’ is the one thing this note can’t be.
You crumble the paper into a ball and toss it toward the trashcan.
Haldeman’s irritatingly meticulous, sure. But pleasant enough when he wants to be. Eager to oblige if you know how to ask. And intrinsically bureaucratic.
Regarding the ongoing integrity of our communal residential security apparatus, it has come to the attention of the relevant parties that certain discrepancies exist in the visitor logs regarding after-hours access. Please rectify this immediately to maintain our shared standards.
You read it over, and it’s so dry it practically makes your throat itch. It’s a shame you can’t sign it come and find me bitch -H.
Hotchner is probably sitting in his study right now, his spine so straight it’s technically a structural support for the building, highlighting bylaws with a precision that borders on the erotic.
Actually it’s more than bordering. It’s a little depraved, honestly, that you find the mental image of a man hunting for a legal loophole so… appealing.
You can practically see the way his tongue might peek out to wet his lips in a moment of unconscious focus.
How he catches his bottom lip between his teeth when he finds a snag in the logic. The way his brow furrows when he hits a particularly convoluted stretch of legalese.
The broad, unyielding line of his shoulders against the leather of his chair. The light catching the silver in his hair as he leans over his desk.
“If she comes to me, I’ll handle it,” he’d said.
Hotchner expects movement—he’s practically cleared a path for it—but he isn’t going to examine the mechanics. He’s positioned himself as the inevitable resolution. The only man with enough gravity to contain the landslide you’re about to start.
The note trembles slightly in Donna’s hand. The paper warm from the brief press of her palm. Her eyes dart down the hallway, half-expecting Haldeman to appear with a clipboard and a scowl.
You lean back, voice light, careful. “Maybe it’s worth talking to someone who actually knows the bylaws,” you suggest. You don’t say his name. You don’t even hint. Just drop the seed.
Donna frowns, hesitates, then nods slowly. It’s enough. The thought takes root.
By the time she reaches Hotchner, the tension around her has found its anchor.
“There’s nothing in the bylaws that allows another resident to regulate your guests. If this continues, it would fall under harassment,” he says. Gentle, even, calming.
Her shoulders drop. The tight line of her jaw softens. The corner of her mouth quirks, a hint of relief crossing her features.
Poor Haldeman. Picked the wrong captain. Now he’s going down with the ship. Should’ve checked the weather, boys. xo
Contrary to all prudent expectation, Hotchner was the one who suggested the plan for this evening.
Two tickets to some real pretentious avant-garde theatre performance, to sway the Buchanans, no less, with a display of cultural curiosity entirely his own.
You were equal parts impressed and horrified.
Patrick and Shelley Buchanan, in 524, for lack of a better term, are as pedantic wealthy DC couple as they come. The kind of people who view a three-hour, intermission-free reimagining of Antigone as a social necessity rather than a tax-exempt circle jerk for people who want to feel profound for staring at a pile of gravel.
Now, sitting in the suffocating silence of the theater, you can see this mission for what it is: a bureaucratic fever dream.
Hotchner should stick to what he knows and leave the scheming to you. This entire thing fucking sucks.
On stage, a man playing Creon is dressed in a double-breasted suit three sizes too small. He sits at a metal desk that looks like it was scavenged from a condemned federal building. On the desk, an ashtray filled with half smoked cigarettes.
Enter stage left, a woman in a red silk dress and a gas mask (you can’t tell what her role is supposed to be. anyone’s guess is as good as yours). She roughly shreds documents to the agonizing ticks of a metronome.
You shift in your seat. Your forearm brushes against the heavy, cool silk of Hotchner’s tuxedo sleeve
He’s so still he might as well be part of the set. A study in repressed agitation and expensive tailoring.
The light from the stage catches the slope of his nose. It makes his cufflinks glint slightly. You lean in, cupping your hand around his ear to keep your voice from carrying. Fingers grazing the back of his head. His hair feels cold. Neatly gelled into place.
He smells really nice. Soft iris, warm leather, mellow tonka. Probably dabbed right on the pulse point.
“He’s got the costume down,” you whisper, your lips barely brushing the shell of his ear. “Weary bureaucrat in a suit two sizes too small. Remind you of anyone?”
He doesn’t turn his head. His skin feels warm under your touch.
“I don’t smoke in the office,” he whispers back. “And I’d like to think my filing system involves fewer unburied relatives.”
Notice how he doesn’t deny that his suits fit too snugly ?
You lightly pinch his arm. A sharp, playful jab through the fabric of his sleeve. Completely absurd, but you can’t help thinking he’s solid—just from a few square inches of arm.
(at this rate, you might have to skip the spring sale and just pay full price for that vibrator.)
A man in modern evening wear enters at the very edge of the stage. He leans casually against the proscenium arch with a pocket watch in hand. He looks profoundly bored by the tragedy he’s about to narrate. As if the impending death of the protagonist is a minor scheduling conflict.
Behind him, the woman is trying to stop the metronome.
Hotchner finally breaks. He doesn't move his head, but he leans just enough that his shoulder presses firmly against yours, the heat of his neck radiating toward your face.
“Who’s the lady in red supposed to be?” His breath brushes your cheek. Cutting through the unsteady tick tick tick of the metronome.
“She’s evading a tax audit,” you reply.
A soft, genuine laugh escapes him. A sound he definitely didn’t intend to make in a room full of DC’s most humorless elite.
You turn your head. You can see the fine lines at the corners of his eyes crinkling. He’s smiling. There’s a dimple on his cheek.
“You’re terrible,” he murmurs.
“She’s… the breakdown of the social contract,” you guess. You smile back at him softly. “I don’t know. I thought this type of pretentious bullshit was your thing.”
He shakes his head. A slow, weary denial. The movement is slight, but because your faces are already so close, the rugged skin of his jaw brushes against your cheek.
He lets out a quiet, almost imperceptible sigh. “God, no,” he whispers. “I really hate this play.”
You stifle a snort and lean your arm closer against his. You briefly turn your head toward where the Buchanans are sitting four rows down, and your chin brushes against his shoulder.
Because he doesn't pull back, you’re forced to speak directly into the crook of his neck.
“What if Shelley finds out you don’t appreciate the visceral honesty of this representation?”
“The only thing visceral about this is how strongly I want it to be over,” he says.
You notice, almost idly, that you didn’t actually speak much to the Buchanans before the play started. A flurry of air-kisses and a vague promise of ‘grabbing a drink’ after the play. (refer back to when you said ‘scheming is hard fucking work’. as a tactical maneuver, Hotchner’s plans are failing spectacularly. as a date, they’re becoming increasingly distracting).
On stage, Creon offers Antigone a cup of coffee. The absurdity of it makes you laugh quietly. Hotchner’s eyes stay on the stage, but the corners of his mouth lift.
“It’s probably decaf,” he jokes. You feel his voice reverberate against your shoulder. “Anything else would be too much of a commitment to the scene.”
You’re absentmindedly playing with his cufflinks.
“You would find the lack of proper caffeine to be the real tragedy here,” you point out playfully. “Not the impending execution of an anarchist.”
His expression remains perfectly neutral, his voice a deadpan rasp that barely carries past your ear.
“Execution is part of the procedural framework of Greek tragedy,” he says. “It’s expected. Serving decaf is sloppy work.”
He shifts his gaze toward you expectantly. The corners of his mouth twitching into a barely hidden smile.
You’re itching to say something about sloppy work but there’s a time and place for blowjob jokes.
“I’d hate to be the intern who forgot your cream and sugar during a briefing.”
He lets out a quiet chuckle.
Creon finally delivers the fatal decree. Antigone kneels, resigned. The absurd coffee cup clinks against the floor, a tiny, meaningless punctuation in the grand tragedy.
The man at the edge of the stage clicks his pocket watch shut with a sharp, metallic snap that echoes through the hushed theater.
He doesn't offer a eulogy. He just sighs, a long, weary sound of a man who has seen too many revolutions and not enough competent catering.
“The tragedy is concluded,” he announces flatly. He might as well be saying ‘the meeting is adjourned.'
The stage lights cut to black.
And in that sudden absence of everything—noise, glare, expectation—you turn toward him. There’s a long beat, just the two of you suspended in the shadowed theater.
His fingers are warm. His thumb caresses your cheek. You feel his breath against your lips.
You lean in, and so does he. Just a brush at first. A hesitant, blind searching in the gloom. Then, a slow, deliberate press. His lips feel slightly chapped.
It’s strangely different than in the pool. The kiss is very soft, very gentle. It’s the kind of kiss that tastes like a secret kept too long. The quiet aftermath of absurdity and closeness.
The first scattered claps of applause break out. The house lights flicker on.
The cast emerges from the wings. A long, united line of sweat and heavy makeup, leans forward in a synchronized, practiced salute to the public.
At the very edge of the line, the man with the pocket watch doesn't smile. He bows with the rest, his movements fluid but detached, as if he’s already mentally halfway to the parking garage. Thus ends what was inevitable, in whispers and half-light.
The wind nudges through the building's fire escape. Slipping through the gaps like an invisible audience. The metal under your hands feels cold and slightly damp from the night’s dew.
An orange cat winds between Hotchner’s legs. Too clean to be a true stray. Too familiar with him. He pets it with calm, gentle strokes. His fingers softly going through the fur. The cat leans into him, settling against his side.
And the faint scent of iris and leather lingers. Comforting in its subtle insistence.
A gentle surge of light ebbs and flows across his face. Catching in small glinting flecks along his lashes. The corners of his eyes crinkle.
Tires hum along the asphalt. His bowtie is loosened, the collar of his shirt opened, jacket draped over the railing.
Your fingers mirror his, tracing the rusted, unyielding rivets of the fire escape.
To build an iron ladder for another’s ascent is to forge the very bars of one's own cage. Once at the summit, the eye cannot tolerate the rust that made the climb possible.
You pull your hand back. A brownish droplet travels down the winding lines of your palm. From the condensation meeting the oxidized metal. The color of coffee.
Hotchner’s thumb slowly goes back and forth over the cat’s ear. He smiles fondly as the cat purrs.
“You’re quiet,” he says softly. “What’s on your mind?”
He looks entirely too… kind.
It’s the kind of warmth that makes the rust on your palm feel like a brand.
You realize, with a sudden, sickening clarity, that he isn't just being polite.
He’s looking at you with the steady, unblinking regard of a man who has made a choice. Who has, through whatever method he deems dependable, decided that your loyalty is a fixed point.
“Can I tell you something ?”
“Anything,” he says.
“I’m paying Grant off the books,” you say, the words coming out in a flat, honest rush. “Two hundred a month to let me use a mail alcove in the basement as a private storage unit.”
The rusty drop in your palm falls to the ground.
“That’s why I asked you to run for the seat,” you admit. “If Rosen ran unopposed, the construction crews would have been in that basement by the end of the month.”
His foot taps rhythmically against the metal. Tick tick tick.
You feel a sudden, jagged contraction in your chest. A suffocating tightness that makes the night air feel thin and useless.
You’ve basically handed a gun fanatic a custom-fitted grip of his own service weapon and turned your back.
Out of malicious design and ambition, you’ve ended up making yourself faithful to him. Even if he doesn’t pull the trigger, you know that such rash conduct is bound to bring your ruin.
The only sin a schemer cannot survive is making yourself vulnerable to the truth.
His hand stops. The cat nudges its head against his frozen knuckles in a persistent, wordless demand for him to return to the task.
He looks frankly taken aback. A rare, unguarded flicker of genuine surprise crossing his features that he can’t quite catch in time.
Then, the mask begins to slide back into place, but it’s heavier now. You can practically see the gears behind his eyes shifting. His brows knit together, a small, involuntary crease forming between them as he stares at your face.
He finally looks down at the cat, his fingers resuming their petting. “Why are you telling me this now ?”
“I don’t know,” you whisper. The admission is hesitant, almost frightened.
It’s technically not the first time you’ve been truly honest with him, but it feels like a death sentence.
He looks at you, and for a fleeting second, there is a small, almost invisible softening of his eyes.
“Okay,” he says.
This is very… anti-climactic.
You’ve been holding your breath for three acts of fire-escape angst, bracing for a grand monologue of betrayal and a flash of silver handcuffs (sexy), and he says “Okay.”
The world applauds itself quietly for the joke.
“I hear you,” he continues. “But we aren't going to keep paying off the staff. It’s a liability for them. And for you.”
You aren't surprised. You knew he would make you give up the alcove. Looking at the way his eyes seem to search for yours oh so gently, you realize he knew that you knew.
But it’s the we that catches in your throat. He isn't washing his hands of you. He’s putting them on the helm.
“So what, you’re going to report me to the board?”
There is a frantic, giddy relief vibrating underneath the sarcasm.
“We’re going to find a way to make that storage space legal,” he explains.
He finally meets your gaze comfortably. His eyes steady and reassuring in the amber glow of the streetlamp.
The cotton of his shirt straining slightly against his chest as he leans forward. It bunches and juts out just a tiny bit over his waistband.
The cat lets out a meow that sounds oddly wrong. Less of a cry and more like the sound of a heavy door’s hinges that haven't been greased properly in a decade.
You both let out a quiet chuckle.
For a moment, you simply look at each other, both of you smiling softly.
You shift slightly, leaning back against the cool metal of the fire escape.
The city sprawls below you, a lattice of lights and muted movement. Indifferent to the small acts of defiance and loyalty unfolding above it. Like a stage watching its players. It neither applauds nor condemns, only witnesses.
“Aaron,” you call.
It feels really strange. It’s like a coin you’ve had in your piggy bank for a long time, saved for a rainy day or a desperate one, and you’ve finally decided to break the porcelain to get it out.
He hums.
“Tell me a secret.”
He purses his lips. Pauses his petting. His hand lifts from the orange fur to brush a stray lock of dark hair back from his forehead.
The cat, evidently offended by the sudden cessation of service, doesn't nudge this time. Instead, it snaps forward with a quick, indignity-fueled nip, catching the side of his hand with a sharp set of teeth.
He lets out a sharp, hissed breath, his hand jerking back. Gently taps the cat’s head in disappointment.
A wry, pained sort of amusement flickering in his eyes as he rubs the reddening mark on his skin.
“What kind of secret ?”
You pretend to consider it. “Something naughty.”
He lets out a short, quiet laugh.
“I’m not sure I have any secrets you’d like,” he tells you.
You give him a pointed look of disappointment.
“You ever did coke ? Just between you and me.”
“That’s illegal,” he says simply.
It’s the most Hotchner response possible. It’s so impersonal it’s almost a punchline.
“Not even in law school ?” you press.
“Not even in law school,” he confirms.
His voice is steady, lacking any of the defensive edge a man would have if he were lying. He is, quite boringly, a man of his word.
“You think Rosen ever did coke ?”
“I won't speculate on that,” he says.
“I’m counting that as a yes.”
He doesn't defend Rosen’s honor which you’re choosing to interpret as him agreeing with you.
A comfortable silence settles over the fire escape.
You lean forward, closing the distance between you. You reach out, your fingers joining his in the orange fur.
You pet the cat’s head, and the animal immediately chases your touch, tilting its chin up in a silent demand for more.
Your knuckles brush against each other’s.
“He isn’t mine, you know,” he suddenly announces.
You blink, your hand pausing on the cat’s soft ears.
You briefly wonder if he’s finally admitting to conceiving Jack through a series of notarized affidavits.
“He’s Walter’s” he explains.
You’ve spent the last hour treating this animal like a shared witness to your ruin, and now he’s disowning it.
Talk about a surprise. Walter Heller from 233 has a cat. Walter who is technically living under a lease that, like yours, has a very strict, very underlined No Pets clause.
“I thought the building didn’t allow pets ?”
He doesn't even have the grace to look guilty. Of course he’d make an exception for pussy.
“It doesn’t.”
He just continues to pet the evidence of a lease violation. His thumb goes over yours.
Perhaps there is no shame in being the iron of the ascent when the summit itself refuses to stand without it. Sharing this narrow, rusted ledge, the cold bars of a cage furl into the strength of a shared horizon.
You let out a breath leaning your weight into the metal. You don't mind the view. (specifically his chest. he has very nice tits.)
genre : s11 hotch, very obvious fetish for dad bods and authority, politics but make it stupid and domestic, obnoxious philosophical analogies (like seriously obnoxious), bullying hotch because he's hot
summary : Those who wish to win the favor of a man like Aaron Hotchner will generally approach him with obedience or modesty. You have among your possessions nothing that could even remotely resemble that. You find it more fitting to offer him the seat of building representative, deranged fantasies and pretentious philosophical metaphors. All things considered, not a bad price for the chance to see his tits.
notes : requested by the lovely @ssa-dado who i don't think i'll ever be able to thank enough <33 i hope it's not pretentious of me to say this story is as much yours as it's mine. fair warning, this is like if fanfiction was a badly written philosophy textbook lol
word count: 9.7k
It is simpler to agree to ambition when the difficulties haven't been made obvious. Man's inherent wariness lies dormant, waking at the first hint of misfortune. And usually too late to be useful.
As such, you should consider the Florentine not as a mere collection of apartments, but as a small, slightly neurotic, principality.
Partly ironic to say, as you recognize how absurdly serious this contemplation is, given how mundane its object remains. Which is to say: yes, you're aware this is demented.
This is not conjecture. While your time in unit 122 offers ample evidence, the examples of units 113 and 125 are most preferable.
113, peerless in his arrogance, found great satisfaction in endless late-night parties (you developed a miserable ritual of waiting for his inevitable rendition of Married With Children by Oasis. there is a bleak, private joy in hearing a man scream (sing?) that his music is shite and keeps you up all night without a single spark of self-awareness.)
You'd assume that having Hotchner from 121 sternly tell him off would suffice.
A compelling performance, you have to admit. There is something almost offensively hot about the way his features settle into a mask of pure, paternal disappointment that makes you want to either apologize or do something so egregious it forces him to actually put his hands on (in) you.
But no polite, nor impolite requests to 'please tone it down' or to 'turn that dumb fucking music off' changed 113's manner.
Perhaps Hotchner's frown was to blame — virtue is rarely a deterrent to the truly pretentious.
Therefore, when there is no hope but in impetuous (or unhinged) methods, you should be able to act decisively.
Sure, ‘impetuous methods’ makes it sound like some grand tactical maneuver. If we’re being honest, something like being a thoroughly ice cold bitch works just as well.
The building’s guest parking policy is usually loosely enforced. Most of the residents agree to ‘forget’ to call Arthur —the doorman— ahead of time when they’re having guests. Arthur maintains vigilant oversight naturally (as one might expect, that also includes the ‘police officers’ in inexplicably tight shirts who do house calls), though he and you have found a way of looking past certain things.
It turns out, DC’s towing companies can be surprisingly efficient.
The sound of chains dragging a car or of a machine printing out a parking fine is infinitely more pleasant. Once parties start coming with a ticket, people quickly get to the end of the song. Goodbye I’m going home! — and they usually mean it.
Of course, impetuosity has its limits. You don’t necessarily have to get the big guns out every time some asshole thinks he can get laid by playing Wonderwall.
125 however, was literally wandering through the walls.
A man’s vices are his own. If the guy wants to smoke his way to a nice woody coffin with fancy Cuban cigars, you can’t really fault him for that.
This wasn’t an issue until the building did a steam trap maintenance in the basement and opened up the insulation jackets around the pipes. No idea what that actually means (you’re already too busy pretending to be a war general to get into architecture).
What you do understand, is that your unit and Hotchner’s are on the same run of pipes as 125’s. And that whatever they did in the basement made it so that the scent of cigar smoke carried along the metal and pushed through the floorboards. Meaning: it smelled like a gentlemen’s club in your apartment but without the gentlemen.
If Hotchner did try another sexy but inefficient scolding, you didn’t see him.
You do wonder if he smokes. Probably not. He takes the whole ‘health is wealth’ thing very seriously. Plus you don’t think it’d be good for the smaller Hotchner. Still, if he smoked, you think it’d be something tedious. Like a pipe. Nice thick finger pressing the tobacco down into the bowl.
This would have been a much more interesting set up: Hotchner and laying pipe. But alas, this is still about building pipes.
A slight threat, delivered politely and with a pipe in hand, invites retaliation. Beating someone with it, metaphorically speaking, does not. In short, if you want to be decisive, it must be on a scale that makes vengeance impossible.
And also, it helps if you enjoy it.
It was easy enough to get an empty pack of 125’s cigars. And crumple it into one of the basement’s pipes. Right next to the ‘CAUTION : HIGH HEAT’ tag.
To the insurance inspector, this ends up looking like some reckless idiot sneaked into the basement to smoke and shoved the evidence into flammable insulation. A fire safety compliance notice and a $500 fine later, you’d say all of 125’s carefulness went up in smoke but that’d be tasteless.
From these two examples, it follows that people do not abandon indulgence because it’s inconsiderate, but because it becomes too expensive.
Nonetheless, such corrections rarely go unnoticed by those accustomed to patterns. This isn’t to say that Hotchner doesn’t have his own indulgences. They’re simply more… agreeable.
Namely, the too-early-in-the-morning occasional run from which he comes back sweaty and out of breath. It’s a sporadic ritual at best, usually following a particularly successful weekend in the kitchen. You suspect he views the dad bod as a failure in discipline. Which couldn’t be more idiotic. Firm where it matters (…), pleasantly soft everywhere else. A real treat.
To him, the run is clearly an act of penance. He seems the type of man who lives in a state of perpetual atonement. Feels guilty for things he hasn’t even done yet. Probably has a priest on speed dial: “Forgive me Father for I have found pride in my record filing system.”
And while he asks for absolution by subjecting his joints to more friction than they can handle at his age, you’re plainly enjoying the show. T-shirt clinging to his heavy, reliable frame, his breathing shallow and labored, a fine sheen of sweat on his skin. It makes him look less like a federal agent and more like a man who has just been thoroughly undone.
He is, after all, nailing himself to a cross of his own making. By some hidden accord between his own nature (the fact that he’s hot) and the humor of times, the older ladies on the 4th floor have started giving him and Jack baking lessons on Sundays.
He does share his little indulgences with you. Though you had to… gently incentivize him. The first time you caught him in the elevator with a container of homemade lemon bars, he’d looked ready to guard them with his life.
“Mister Hotchner, surely you aren’t planning on keeping all of those for yourself?” you’d remarked. A microscopic flick of amusement crossed his face before he wordlessly offered you one.
Since then, anytime he hands you one of his still warm treats, you find yourself slipping into a very specific, very deranged fantasy.
In your mind, you imagine coming home from a long day of conquering the world, loosening your tie, dropping your keys on the side table and calling out for your little wife.
He’d be in the kitchen, wearing a nice floral apron, standing over a cooling cherry pie or some other time consuming desert. His eyes looking up at you, soft and glassy, from the desire to please you (and from whatever imaginary pharmaceutical miracle you’ve clearly overprescribed him in your head).
It’s your delightful taste of male entitlement — desecrating his competence for your own indulgence.
Fortunately, he’s not on any dosage of pharmacological domesticity. He has noticed. Not the fucked up 1950s fantasy. But your careful orchestrations of chaos for the sake of order.
How coincidentally, towing companies started hovering like vultures around the building on Friday nights. Or how, as annoying as 125 is, he wouldn’t waste a fine Cuban cigar on a dingy basement view.
It would be a terrible disservice to his rigor to pretend he hasn’t considered the possibility that Fortune had an accomplice. But true mastery of a principality lies not in what can be seen or what can be suspected — it’s in what cannot be traced.
As pleasurable as it is to feel his gaze narrow at you —curiosity tempered by reluctant amusement— you know that he’s too principled to accuse you of anything without evidence. For all his perceptiveness, he’s remarkably predictable.
Predictability is the coin of the prudent. A man who always walks the same path provides the very stones for his own stumbling.
And yet those same stones form the foundation upon which stability can be built. Which is why anyone offering to rearrange them — talking up and down about improvement or optimization— is rarely a reformer at all, but a merchant of annoyance, eager to be paid in spectacle.
Funnily enough, you’re just about to join the auction. Not because you enjoy throwing dollar bills on stage. But because improvement asks questions and you don’t trust anything that requires answers.
So as you stand before the solid wood of unit 121, you adjust your expression from calculated general looking solemnly at the battlefield (wallets included) to concerned neighbor.
You do consider the idea of leaning against the door frame and seductively greeting him with an “Aaron, why don’t you come and give daddy a big kiss?” but you don’t think he’d appreciate the joke.
He looks exactly how you’d expect: impeccably tired. He’s taken off the suit jacket. His shirt —nice light blue cotton, likely ironed by someone who actually fears him— stretches across his shoulders, struggling to contain the sheer width of him. His sleeves are rolled up to reveal his thick forearms and his tie is loosened just enough to say that he’s off the clock.
Or at least, that the FBI has officially released its grip on his throat and handed him over to the custody of a fifth-grader.
“I’m trying to decide if this is very early, very important,” he says, “or if I’ve simply lost track of when it's appropriate to knock on a neighbor’s door.”
You let your gaze linger on the open collar of his shirt, at the faint lines at his throat, just long enough to suggest insolence, before finally meeting his eyes.
“It’s important for now,” you say lightly, “but it could become inappropriate if you prefer.”
A small, dry laugh escapes him.
“I’ll stick with important,” he replies calmly, leaning a hand against the doorframe.
It almost looks like he’s trying to slut himself out a bit. His fingers spread against the wood, his arm flexing just enough to hint at the muscle beneath the cotton without actually ripping the seams.
It occurs to you, not for the first time, that if men like him were more ambitious, the Florentine would be a much simpler principality to govern.
Because in here lies the premise of this entire obnoxious monologue: some grand modern cunt in 411, convinced that stability is merely a cloak for stagnation, is promising the spectacles and circuses of reform to cure the building of its boredom with order.
“What do you think of David Rosen’s campaign for building representative?” you ask simply.
His brows furrow in their perpetual line of weary concentration before he catches himself and smooths it away, like a man remembering he’s being observed. The face he offers you instead is polite, neutral, and deeply unenthusiastic.
“I wasn’t aware we were calling it a campaign,” he answers like the distinction matters.
To be fair, campaign might not be the most suitable term here. It’s more so Rosen’s attempt to free himself from his bleak destiny: ‘David Ro—what? who’s that? the prosecutor? never heard of him. wait, show me a picture. aaah. yeah. that guy’—sen.
He’s going in with the whole nine (inches) yards. Modernizing the building’s façade. Adding some gastronomic restaurant in the lobby. Replacing the current staff with ‘formally trained professionals’ (whatever the fuck that means). In short, the exact kind of grandiose reformist promises that require a predictable and stabilizing force: Hotchner.
“His audition,” you offer. “Or strip show, but with clothes on. And instead of a cheap thrill, you end up with a guy following you home with a measuring tape and a construction hat.”
“I doubt that’s part of his qualifications.”
He briefly catches your eye as he says it. Maybe to see if you’ve caught his joke. Or maybe to defend the honor of a fellow prosecutor, who knows.
“No?” you tilt your head. “They don't teach you how to work a pole in law school? I thought that was what the bar was for.”
The faintest trace of amusement tugs at his lips. “That wasn’t included in the exam when I took it,” he says evenly.
“A real shame.”
If he knew how perversely you’re imagining him throwing a bra off the stage to reveal his very nice chest, you might be looking at 30 years to life.
Back to war, before he can sentence you with anything.
“He’s running unopposed. And I know you disagree with his proposals,” you continue.
He doesn’t deny it. Instead, he shifts his weight, sliding one hand into his pocket—a gesture that should be casual, but on him, it reads like a warning and an invitation at the same time.
“It’s visionary. But speculative,” he begins. The way he says speculative sounds like federal speak for out-of-his-fucking-mind. “Too many changes for the sake of change. I like things as they are. There’s no reason to invite unnecessary risks or disruptions.”
This is exactly why predictability is the only currency that matters here. People are faithful to the benefits they know will come to them. Which is why any aspiring showgirl (such as Rosen) will always find opposition in those who grew rich under certainty, and lukewarm loyalty in those who hope for change.
“I couldn’t agree more,” you say, letting your voice soften into something that sounds like genuine relief. You know just how much of a pain in the ass this is going to be. But now is the time to act with the boldness that ambition demands. “Which is why I think you should run against him.”
He doesn't look surprised. He’s likely seen this coming since you mentioned the 'strip show' but he does look profoundly tired. He pulls his hand from his pocket and rubs the bridge of his nose. The lines on his face somehow deepen for a second.
“I don’t have the time for it,” he refuses, calm but firm. “Between work… and everything else, I barely see Jack during the week. My schedule isn’t exactly predictable, and the little time I do have at home, I dedicate entirely to him.”
Using his son as an argument here would be a fatal mistake. Like trying to play the violin with a sledgehammer. You can’t make him your enemy before you make him your instrument.
“I know,” you tell him gently. You have to sound like you’re sorry to even be asking him. Because the easiest way to get to him is through his pathological sense of duty.
“But that’s why I came to you,” you add. “This doesn’t need campaigning. It just needs someone who’s steady enough to not let it turn into a complete mess.”
His jaw tightens almost imperceptibly.
“If Rosen wins, it’ll be weeks of construction. And then, we’ll have some stupid restaurant in the lobby that charges $50 for one single pea on a plate that they’ll call ‘deconstructed greenery’. And he even wants to get rid of the staff,” you argue, watching his expression carefully. You shrug lightly. “I like Arthur.” And then, almost as an afterthought, “And Grant.”
“Running is the smallest possible intervention to keep things from getting fucked,” you finish.
You can see it land — the way his shoulders settle, the way his resistance shifts from no to calculating the cost.
“Why me?” he asks.
To fully convince a man like Aaron Hotchner, you can’t simply present a logical argument. Logic invites debate. To truly disarm him, you must introduce a variable he won’t be able to categorize.
“Because you’re hot.”
He’s prepared for a manifesto, a comprehensive logical argument, a plea even perhaps. But he doesn’t flinch nor does he fluster.
“I’m sorry?”
You think he’s trying one of those profiling interrogation tactics. There’s a sudden heaviness in his posture, his voice sounds somewhat more authoritative. That might work on the damned but it certainly doesn’t on the deviant.
“You’re significantly hotter than Rosen,” you repeat shamelessly.
It technically isn’t a lie. He is hotter. By any reasonable metric. Measurably so.
It’s the hands. Fine dark hairs, wide palms, thick fingers. The kind of hands that suggest a terrifying amount of … grip strength. The kind you imagine running softly along your lips before he presses his fingers inside your mouth. Pushing down lightly against your tongue. To quiet you when you’ve pushed him too far and he feels like he’s losing control. Or maybe simply because he has to maintain that impeccably suffocating composure even while you’re trying to make him come apart at the seams.
Anyways.
Truth is, it’s more useful to let him think this is all impulsive. If you place a frivolous coin in his hand, he’ll spend more time trying to count it than closing his fingers around the truth.
“That’s a remarkably poor reason to choose a representative,” he counters.
Why Hotchner ? Because people already straighten their ties when he comes near. Voices lower, even slightly, when he enters a room. Chairs are nudged back into place, papers aligned, as if no one wants to even risk showing him the slightest bit of disorder.
Rosen wants to be liked, admired, loved. Maybe because no one ever told him he was a good boy. Doesn’t matter. He’s unpredictable because he’s desperate for approval.
“Is it?” you hum, tapping your finger on your lower lip.
Love is a gift of the people. But fear is the tool of the ruler. As long as people fear Hotchner without hating him, they will remain too preoccupied with their own conduct to ever notice yours.
“Honestly, I think you’d be good at it. And…,” you draw it out, letting a little faux hesitation settle in. “I really don’t like Rosen.”
You actually don’t care that much about Rosen. Hatred would require a more noteworthy person. But his plan to modernize the building involves not only auditing the floorplans for construction but also getting rid of the current staff.
And that’s a problem. Huge fucking one. See, there’s a forgotten pre-war mail sorting alcove tucked behind a staff door (that’s technically supposed to be shut at all times). It’s not listed anywhere as a storage unit, and no one knows about it. Or pays for it.
You do. Well… not exactly. You pay Grant— the building manager —directly to keep it quiet.
Rosen’s bullshit renovations, the restaurant, all of it, would warrant pulling up the blueprints. No need to further explain why that’s a nuisance.
You can’t say you hate him but you certainly disdain him for how incontinent his audacity is turning out to be.
“You don’t like his policies,” he clarifies.
He studies you for a moment longer than necessary. His gaze isn’t sharp so much as deliberate — like he’s picked up a puzzle piece and is quietly deciding where it belongs.
“I don’t like him,” you repeat simply.
He gives you a small smile. Part patronizing and part knowing. It’s probably the kind of smile he gives Jack when he tries to stay up past his bedtime with a flimsy excuse. It says that he sees your game, he finds it somewhat endearing and he’s content to let you play. Provided you stay within the lines he’s drawn.
“Not liking someone usually isn’t enough to motivate this much effort,” he says firmly.
“Also I’m using this as an excuse to spend time with you.” (wink wink)
A surprised little chuckle escapes him. Soft and unguarded, slipping past his usual fortress of control.
“What ? I’m just being more honest about it than your 'baking teachers' from the 4th floor.”
He looks down for a second, shaking his head. As if he’s trying to find a way not to encourage you.
“I’m fairly certain Mrs. Mitchell is only interested in Jack’s progress with a whisk.”
“Mrs. Mitchell is seventy two. Not blind.”
He exhales quietly. Could be another laugh or could just be a sigh. He rests his palm on his side. Fingers settling against the slight give at his waist. Eyes still on yours.
“You’ve put a lot of thought into this.”
It’s not a compliment. It’s accounting.
“I didn’t take you for someone so… neighborly,” he adds.
He lets it hang for a second. In light of your history in 122, it sounds like an accusation of heresy. He tilts his head with the ghost of a smile. He’s aware you’re hiding a knight in your sleeve but he’s curious enough to let you place it on the board.
You don’t need to completely deceive him. You just need to give him a good enough reason to act.
“I’ll think about it,” he finishes before you can find a rebuttal.
He gives you a final, polite nod. The kind of professional dismissal he likely gives his subordinates from his big intimidating FBI office. It’s efficiently authoritative. The look of a man who’s spent more years in aseptic briefing rooms than you’ve spent in the adult world.
It makes you feel like you’re one of his interns who’s just overstepped in a meeting about whatever it is that they do at his fancy job. It is also, in a way that would probably concern a therapist, deeply arousing.
The door doesn’t slam. It smoothly clicks back into place. A “That will be all” in physical form.
Perhaps you’ve reached his limit on neighborly insubordination.
A limit is never a wall unless you lack the will to climb it. Because power is not found within the lines, but in the act of crossing them.
Crossing 121’s threshold feels less like an innocent neighborly visit and more like you’re a diplomatic envoy entering a rival’s capital. Except the rival is wearing a black polo that nicely hugs his arms and smells faintly of laundry detergent, tonka bean and espresso.
“Make yourself comfortable,” he tells you. His tone suggests he’s still deciding if comfortable is a state he should actually allow you within the four walls of his living room.
You expected more… austerity. Some freakish FBI shrine with aggressively neutral furniture and a framed copy of the constitution.
But his place looks thoughtful. Lived-in.
Bookshelves filled with fancy leather bound hardbacks. Law, psychology, history. Biographies of old men who definitely liked hearing themselves talk a little too much.
Framed photos. Of his kid. Grinning, asleep, playing soccer, wearing a suit (which you suppose answers the question of whether Hotchner’s compulsion toward ties is genetic or simply contagious).
And drawings. Framed as carefully as the photos. Crayon suns. Lopsided houses. Stick figures with names written too large. And also for some reason, one of the US flag with parachutes and a bald eagle.
You’re fairly certain he supervised that one. You hope he doesn’t make his kid sing the national anthem before eating breakfast.
You’re looking for a crack, a secret vice, a hidden stack of trashy smutty novels. But it all looks like the living room of a man in his early fifties. Work, kid, dinner, sleep, repeat. Thrill-seeking not included. He probably keeps his porn in the bedroom.
You’re running your finger along the edge of the shelf, half-hoping to find a fine layer of dust you can use as leverage when you hear him clearing his throat.
He’s clearly been standing there for at least a minute, carrying a small tray with 2 cups of coffee and a plate of cookies. He doesn’t look annoyed, necessarily. He looks like he’s just finished reading a particularly predictable file.
You don’t pretend you weren’t snooping around gathering information.
“So, when can I see your bedroom?” you ask with a shameless grin.
“When you have a warrant.”
He sets the tray on the coffee table and gestures for you to sit back down.
You pick up a cookie and inspect it for store-bought mediocrity just to spite him.
He slides a neatly printed sheet of paper toward you. Bullet points, clear headings, a few handwritten notes. Predictable. Efficient. Erotically bureaucratic.
“I’ve put together some ideas for the campaign,” he explains. “I thought we could start with the things that matter most to the residents. Safety, maintenance, community programs. I’ve outlined a rough plan.”
What he calls a rough plan is in fact already operational. You look back at him with a little smile.
This reads less like a draft and more like something a very particular type of old school Republican homemaker would apologize for, lamenting the ‘disastrous mess’ while adjusting her pearls, meanwhile her couch pillows look like they've been positioned using a calibrator.
It’s not an apology, it’s a subtle power play. He’s saying that even his rough is infinitely better than what others consider finished.
“This is solid,” you tell him honestly.
He prepares like someone who expects consequences. Like someone who has learned that being thorough is the only way to keep things from slipping through his fingers. Except he’s planned for resistance without assuming malice.
He clearly has all the command of authority but lacks the ruthlessness to use it.
“Walk me through it.”
He takes a sip of his coffee. His tongue slips past his way-too-pink lips while he puts down his cup. Then he shifts closer, turning the page so it faces you properly.
“Most people here don’t want big changes. They want things to run smoothly,” he begins quietly. “They want to know that when they come home, the elevator works, the halls are quiet, and the temperature is exactly what they set it to.”
He runs his finger over the bullet points.
You nod along attentively. He’s basically pitching an utopian vision of boredom.
“I want it to be comfortable,” he adds. There’s something unguarded about him when he speaks. “Not just for anyone. But for Jack. This is where he lives. Where he should feel safe, where things should just… work. That’s important to me.”
It’s hard to stay a cynic when you’re faced with a man who treats a building representative role like a sacred oath to his son.
“I don’t think it needs to be complicated,” he continues. “If day to day life feels easier, people notice. That’s enough.”
It’s surprising how he plans as though people will behave like rational adults. He plans for systems, not appetites. Which is virtuous… in theory.
“What if people don’t notice?” you ask.
He looks up at you calmly. “I know they might not. That doesn’t change what needs to be done.”
You watch him for a moment. He looks absolutely resolute. So utterly and unshakably devoted to doing the right thing, whether people thank him or not, that you feel compelled to be completely honest with him for once.
“I get it. Really. But that’s not how you win an election. People are fickle and ungrateful. They only vote for what they see.”
You let your gaze linger on his handwritten comments.
“I don’t want your vision to go unnoticed just because people can’t see it.”
He looks at you wordlessly. There’s a certain… softness? in his eyes that wasn’t there before. He gives you a small smile. Real. Uncalculated. It feels foreign but somehow you don’t mind it.
“I appreciate that,” he says. “I’m willing to listen. I just need to know we’re doing this cleanly.”
He tilts his head at you pointedly but not unkindly. Like he’s about to scold you for a behavior he’s already forgiven.
“No dirty tricks.”
A man who makes a profession of goodness in all things will come to grief among so many who are not good. Therefore if he is to remain the face of virtue, you’ll have to become the hand of necessity.
“No dirty tricks,” you repeat.
You lift your coffee cup towards him. He hesitates for a second before raising his own cup. Porcelain tapping porcelain.
“That would actually make a great slogan,” you joke lightly. “Down and dirty with Hotchner. What do you think?”
He lets out a sigh.
“We’re not calling it that.”
“What about Let’s erect a better future ?”
“Absolutely not.”
You take a bite out of your cookie.
“What would you call it then?”
He doesn’t answer immediately. He glances back down at the page, as if the slogan has been sitting there the whole time, filed neatly alongside the rest.
“Something straightforward.” He softly taps his lower lip with his index. “Doing things the right way.”
The cookie tastes great. You chew it carefully. Because it’s clearly homemade and because he definitely uses nice chocolate. And also because you’re trying to keep yourself from laughing.
In your head, you can almost hear the faint, crackling audio of a 1980s campaign ad. Pure Reagan. Morning in America for people who consider a perfectly organized filing cabinet a spiritual triumph.
“Hotchner,” you say firmly. “This type of thing used to work in the 80s. People want sex now.”
He stiffens ever so slightly, a faint crease appearing between his brows. There’s a flash of pink in his ears.
“Mrs. Harrison has been a respectable building administrator for more than 30 years and she’s never had to resort to—”
“When did she first run?”
He stays quiet for a moment. Looks down at his campaign notes, then back at his coffee, as if history might have rearranged itself to be more convenient for his argument. It hasn’t.
“1984,” he admits sheepishly.
See ? You’re not being pretentious just for the sake of it. The world seems to enjoy proving you right.
“Do you think there’s a way to get Mrs. Harrison to endorse you?” you ask.
He shakes his head. “She believes in letting the election run its course without interference. She won’t endorse anyone.”
“Or maybe she told you that because she doesn’t like you.”
He blinks, caught-off guard. The idea that that old hag of an administrator might harbor a secret grudge against him seems to rattle his fundamental understanding of the building’s ecosystem. “Where did you get that idea?”
“I heard it’s because you tried to sleep with her husband.”
He stares at you blankly. His brows furrowed. His eyes narrowed. As if processing the unmitigated lunacy of what you just said requires the full cooperation of his entire face.
Then it happens.
A sharp, sudden giggle escapes him. He ducks his head, a hand coming up to cover his mouth but he can’t stop it. His shoulders shake and his laugh sounds way higher pitched than you expected but painfully sincere.
When he looks back at you, eyes bright and still crinkled at the corners, you think that he’s really beautiful. It selfishly makes you want to corrupt him.
“How do you even come up with stuff like this?” he asks, voice laced with amusement.
“Divine inspiration,” you answer with a proud grin.
He leans in slightly, lowering his voice conspiratorially. Endearingly dramatic. How he treats building gossip with the same level of operational security as a national secret. Also… there’s only the two of you in his apartment.
“This stays between us but I think she and her husband are getting a divorce. That’s why she’s not running again.”
The sudden proximity might be a tactical error on his part. Or perhaps a calculated risk. You can feel the heat radiating off him. The steady solidness of his frame next to you. His thigh pressing against yours.
“Don’t tell me you actually slept with her husband.”
He chuckles again. “I don’t think I’m his type.”
You can’t help the smile that tugs at your lips. You wonder how he’d react if you told him that about 40% of the building (and that’s a conservative estimate) wants to fuck him.
Your thigh brushes against his — a small, calculated nudge. Nothing overt, but enough.
You might be the first general to zest a lemon. Strangely, there’s no exceptionally meritorious flour-sifting in a duty of great responsibility medal.
Which there should be. It’s a high-stakes chemistry operation performed in a cloud of fine white powder (not the fun kind) with no laboratory equipment.
This speaks volumes about the level of masochism Hotchner hides under those pressed shirts. It’s his government sanctioned place of controlled suffering. That’s why he pretends not to notice the way Mrs. Mitchell or even Mrs. Dillon look at him like he’s proofed just right. He’s too busy imagining getting whipped with a whisk (until stiff peaks form).
You glare at the counter. Flour everywhere. Sugar places it has no business being. A sink full of dishes that will still be there when you get back from your diplomatic visits. So much for doing this ‘the clean way’.
This is, in a very roundabout way, Hotchner’s fault. It makes you want to drag him into your kitchen by his leash tie and scold him, “Kneel. And explain the flour”.
Unfortunately, Hotchner doesn’t bend. He endures. Which means you’re the one who has to do the bending (…).
You must bend your mind to see the shadow before the blade. If you wait for the steel to bite, you are no longer a strategist but merely a casualty of your own blindness.
That is to say, the surest way to lose an election, is to wait for loyalties to step into the light, instead of seeking them out while they still hide in the shadows.
Most people do not know why they support something. They mistake momentum for conviction. Enthusiasm for foresight.
That is why you do not begin by asking people what they believe. Belief is ornamental. You begin by observing what makes them nervous.
If power has a natural enemy, it’s scrutiny. Consequently, it must be exercised through gestures that appear generous and conversations that seem incidental. Hence the baking. No one expects consequences to come wrapped in parchment paper and powdered sugar.
War, after all, is not only fought with weapons (though you think KitchenAids could be classified as small siege engines). It’s fought with timing. With preparation. With knowing which doors to knock on and which ones to leave closed until you know what waits behind them.
Take Mr. Haldeman in 314. Senior white house consultant. He’s so nervous about property value he’s currently trying to sell his own mother for a 7% increase in equity (call 1-800-MOM-FOR-CASH ! supplies limited — buy now, pay later!). Though to be fair, he’s always been really nice to you.
Or Mr. Agnew in 211. Rosen’s closest buddy (no homoerotic situation here you think. but then again who knows. Rosen’s allegedly married but no one has ever seen his wife). He’s the one who secured the restaurant deal. He most likely hopes no one is looking too closely at the fine print of the contract.
And of course, Hotchner’s 4th floor fanclub. Mrs. Dillon and Mrs. Mitchell. They’re probably nervous that Hotchner might one day stop wearing his tight suits that leave nothing to the imagination (so are you).
Mrs. Mitchell is that brand of particularly delightful old woman: she stares at his chest unashamedly while her husband glares at him like he’s the guy who’s going to steal his pension. At this point, Mr. Mitchell’s hatred of Hotchner might be the only thing keeping his heart beating.
Treating them the same would be inefficient. Efficiency requires classification (if Hotchner knew you’re applying federal-level organizational rigor to a plate of muffins, he’d probably whip his cream. you can almost see him, brows furrowed in concentrated approval, letting out breathless sighs of pleasure at your color coded spreadsheet of the building’s residents).
So you sort.
Not by conviction.
Not by enthusiasm.
But by vulnerability.
Because people are so governed by the urgency of their appetites, if you craft a sweet enough illusion, you will always find a victim ready to fall upon your blade.
You start with Agnew. Not everything he says is useful. Matter of fact, most of it is fluff. He thinks you’re still undecided so he’s trying to sway you. He doesn’t give you any campaign secrets—he’s too well-trained for that—but pride is a loud mistress.
“We’re thinking once we get the constructions started, it might do the building good to renovate the entire thing. Not just the façade. Don’t get me wrong, it has its charm, I’m not talking about getting rid of everything. Just… give it a fresher look. We’re still discussing things.”
‘The entire thing’ doesn’t mean just paint and lighting. It means assessments. Special fees. Emails with numbers bolded for emphasis.
In theory, it sounds like a great idea. Improve the building, raise the standards. Common mistake but no less forgiving. People rarely open their wallets without resentment. That’s probably why it’s still a discussion.
For a moment, it feels like striking gold. If you so much as utter the word ‘money’, Haldeman is already on his knees, tongue out, waiting for the check to clear.
You expect eagerness. Or at least something you can press on. Instead, when he opens the door, he's polite. Cordial. And completely closed.
You try the innocent approach. You let him explain things to you. You insist he take another muffin. You nod in the right places.
He’s pleasant. Generous with his time. What he isn’t is curious.
Curiosity belongs to the undecided. Haldeman is not undecided. He has already discussed things.
By the time you leave 314, you understand your mistake.
You’re not early. You’re late. If you’re too late here… you must also be too late elsewhere. You should’ve just gotten store-bought muffins.
You take the stairs to the 4th floor. You pass by 411, Rosen’s door, flip it off and mutter a quiet and petty “suck my dick” as professional courtesy. Then you keep going. Mrs. Dillon is down the hall.
Mrs Dillon’s gaze lingers long enough on the crumb of your muffins to tell you she knows exactly what temperature you baked these at, and that it was wrong.
While she dishonorably discharges you for your baking skills (she probably means well. she’s giving you advice on how to make them better next time. there won’t be a next time. the pastries taste better when you extort them from Hotchner anyway), you notice a framed picture of her late husband surrounded by a concerning number of doilies.
“He had a sweet tooth,” she says gently. “When we lived in our old house, I’d let pies cool on the window sills. By the time I came back from the garden, the edges were already gone. He had to taste, couldn’t help himself.” She shakes her head fondly at the memory.
You can almost see it: the sun on the windowsill, the little golden edges disappearing before the pie even had a chance to rest. Funny how something so small can leave a mark. And somehow, you can’t help but think of the building, its own aging façade waiting for care, the same way a neglected pie cools too long in the sun.
If anyone were going to notice a change in the building, it would be her. A whispered comment here, a casual remark there. Mrs. Dillon has been doing this for decades. She gossips not out of malice, but out of habit.
That makes her the perfect carrier for a little strategic information about renovations.
You give her a small smile.
“Are those for my dad?”
You consider your options carefully.
Too carefully.
Children are volatile. They do not respond to precedent, leverage or subtle intimidation. They do not reliably understand irony. And worst of all, they possess a disturbing loyalty to their parents that borders on fanaticism.
You run through scenarios.
If you speak to him like an adult, he’ll think you’re trying too hard.
If you speak to him like a child, he’ll think you’re weird.
If you ignore him, he’ll remember it forever and make your life hell.
Bribery briefly crosses your mind. Candy? Stickers? Something bright and untraceable. But then you picture it. Jack Hotchner, 10 (? or is it 11?) years old, sitting at the dinner table across from his father, calmly reporting how he made his first ever arrest while presenting the 5 dollar bill you tried to slip him as Exhibit A.
“Yes,” you say finally. “Is he home?”
“He’s in the kitchen.”
That’s it.
You stand there, papers in hand, as your brain immediately begins a frantic, high-speed autopsy of the interaction. You're searching for the subtext, but there is no subtext.
He’s in the kitchen. Is that a statement of fact or a territorial boundary? Does it mean ‘Go find him yourself’ or ‘Wait here until I’ve cleared you’?
“Can I come in?”
“Yeah.”
He just walks back inside, leaving the door open for you.
The scent of garlic and something dangerously good wafts through the air. Jack sits at the counter, colored pencils splayed like an assault formation, focused on coloring something.
Hotchner stands at the stove, sleeves rolled up, a dark apron tied loosely around his waist. He looks completely at ease. Competent. Precise. And yet entirely unbothered by the growing chaos of dirty dishes around him.
His forearms look so— okay no. You can’t do this in front of his kid. He looks very handsome while cooking. Let’s keep it at that.
His eyes flick over to you, catching you staring. He notices your little stack of papers.
“Are you staying for dinner?”
You barely have time to nod before Jack looks up from the counter and asks you “Can you help me with this?” waving a half-colored in ‘Vote for my dad’ poster.
You sit beside Jack, picking up a blue crayon. You don’t talk much. You don’t have to (thank god). Jack is a silent, focused worker (his little concentration frown-pout makes him look like his dad). You find yourself falling into a rhythm of filling in the block letters he’s outlined.
Dinner goes well. You listen to them talk about Jack’s science project and the puppies he saw at the park yesterday.
“Bedtime,” Hotchner says eventually.
There’s what you think is the usual half-hearted protest, a quick “it was nice to see you” from Jack and then the apartment goes quiet.
He returns a few minutes later, sleeves still rolled up and top button of his shirt (that you’re sure was buttoned) undone. He’s carrying two glasses of wine. He sets one in front of you and motions toward the stack of papers you’ve been protecting all evening.
The wine tastes nice. Red, deep, and expensive (or at least, more expensive than the ‘I need to get fucked up but vodka feels too hardcore’ blend you usually use to drown your tactical sorrows).
You find yourself swirling the liquid in the glass, watching it cling to the crystal. It’s a stupid gesture (pretentious and largely useless. maybe that’s rich coming from you. but hypocrisy is only embarrassing when it’s accidental). Still, it gives you an excuse to look at your own hands, and then, inevitably, at his.
It appears force is the most effective when it follows mercy. The world judges by the eye and not the touch, and while many witness the mask of your clemency, few ever feel the weight of your hand.
He’s absentmindedly tapping his index on his glass.
“So.. what’s all this?” he asks.
You let your eyes flick down to the stack of papers, then back to him. It’s a printed copy of the building’s amenity hours with several blocks of time highlighted in what you consider a persuasive shade of neon pink.
“The pool schedule,” you say.
He raises an eyebrow. Slips his tongue between his lips, wetting them with a slow, unconscious (he puts his kid to sleep and instantly dials up the whorishness?) deliberation.
“I’m not sure I’m qualified to give swimming lessons,” he says, a faint smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
You don’t bother with the preamble about civic duty and all that jazz.
“I’m not looking for lessons. I’m looking for a show.” You take a sip of your wine, watching him over the rim. “You go in the pool, you swim and you look… hot while doing it.”
He blinks. “I already run. I don’t see how changing my cardio routine affects the building’s administrative future.”
Truth is a fine wine served to a crowd that only craves volume. So as long as the cup is full, the few who taste the vinegar will be ignored.
“Because nobody sees you run,” you explain. “It’s about how you look doing it. You keep your lane, you pace yourself, you follow the rules. People will watch and think ‘if he cares this much about the pH levels of the pool, imagine how diligently he’ll handle the building’s affairs... and he has a nice butt’.”
He stares at you blankly. Like he’s magnanimously giving you the opportunity to retract your statement. If you go down for solicitation of a hot single dad, so be it.
He answers carefully, each word measured. Like he’s reading from a moral ledger no one asked him to consult. Firm but not angry (yet). There’s a trace of exasperation in the tilt of his head. A faint tightening at the corner of his mouth.
“I’ve decided to do this for the good of the building’s residents,” he begins. “Not to promote indecent behavior.”
He takes a sip of wine before he speaks. As if to help himself endure your frivolity. “My son lives here.”
What a fucking prude. The point is to make him look reliable, disciplined.
Hair slicked back, dark strands clinging to his forehead. Swim trunks hugging him just right. The reliable shape of his shoulders and thighs. Arms flexing with each stroke. Chest rising and falling from the effort.
The fact that he’d look sexy doing it is just a bonus.
“You’re never going to make it in politics like this. If you just show a bit of skin we’re guaranteed at least 7 votes.”
He sets down his glass, and leans back slightly. His fingers drum lightly on the table. His jaw tightens. His eyes narrow, thoughtful, scanning the papers again before flicking up to you.
For a long moment he says nothing. You watch the way his hands flex as he rests them on the table. The deliberate, measured way he exhales. Even in stillness, there’s tension in the line of his shoulders. The kind of quiet control that makes it obvious he’s weighing the absurdity of your plan against his own standards.
His lips part then close. You wonder for a second if you’ve finally broken his federal-software. You haven’t even said anything that outrageous. Maybe it’s the first time anyone’s told him he has a nice ass.
He tilts his head back, rubbing at the bridge of his nose. The slow calculations of his mind written in the crease between his brows.
“Okay,” he finally decides. Flat but confident. Not a concession but a choice. “I’ll swim.”
Oh you’re about to get the show of a lifetime.
“Drop the shirt, let’s get to work.” You don’t even try to hide your excitement. It would go against your morals to pretend you’re not thrilled you finally get to see his tits. You’re already trying to calculate the exact refractive index of his skin under water.
“Drop the shirt?” he repeats dryly. He sounds vaguely threatening. His gaze flickers briefly to the shirt you're referring to, then back at you, his lips pressed into a thin line.
There is a certain perverse delight in knowing that while you’re mentally dressing him in too few square inches of high-performance Lycra and a strategic layer of chlorine, he’s building a case against you.
“You can’t just pick a lane and hope for the best. We need to go down to the pool.”
He glances down at his watch. Metal sitting nicely against his wrist, catching the light in a way that screams ‘I have a very healthy retirement fund’.
“It’s nearly eleven.”
“Exactly,” you counter. “No one will be there and we can properly check out which lane makes your arms look the best.”
He gives you a look that is terrifyingly steady—the kind of look that usually precedes a confession in a small, windowless room. It’s no wonder he’s getting paid the big bucks at his FBI job, he could probably get you to confess to assassinating JFK himself.
“You want to go to the pool. Now,” he summarizes, his voice dropping to a skeptical rumble. “To check… the lighting on my arms.”
“You said you were willing to listen.”
He sets his wine glass down on the table. Looks like he’s finally decided to stop entertaining your nonsense. He leans forward, closing the gap between you until you can see the slight amber flecks in his brown eyes.
“Do you actually expect me to believe this is about the campaign?” he asks. “Or are you just testing to see how much of your antics I’m willing to endure before I show you out?”
If you dip your hand into the waters of ambition, you must be prepared to plunge your whole body — the middle way leads only to ruin.
“Both,” you say.
The silence stretches. You’re half-expecting a metronome to start ticking somewhere, just to really commit to the tension.
He doesn’t break eye contact. Doesn’t argue. That’s how you know he’s past skepticism and into assessment.
His gaze drops to his watch again. A reflex. Time, consequences, exits.
He turns his wrist slightly, as if confirming something only he can see, then looks back at you.
“You’re aware it’s late,” he says. Not a protest. A parameter.
You nod.
He exhales through his nose, slow and deliberate. The kind of breath he takes before stepping into a situation he already suspects he’ll have to control.
“All right,” he says at last. Calm. Decided. “We’ll take a look.”
Not because you’ve convinced him but because he’s decided to follow you far enough to find out what you’re actually after.
“Five minutes,” he adds.
The consistency is almost impressive. Even his exceptions obey rules. He isn’t giving in. He’s simply factored in your bullshit into his protocol. Made a slot for your chaos in his schedule, tucked neatly between put Jack to bed and maintain national security.
Chlorine-induced neurosis is an established inevitability, like gravity or your inability to behave around authority figures.
There’s something about pools at night. The chemical bite at the back of your throat (reminiscent of other things that could also hit the back of your throat), the echoing stillness, the way every sound feels amplified and slightly wrong.
The overhead lights hum softly, casting pale reflections across the water. Long white bands rippling over the tiled floors, broken only by the gentle bob of lane dividers floating in disciplined rows, like polite boundaries no one expects you to cross.
Hotchner steps in first. He pauses, assessing the place, to make sure nothing has gone sideways without his permission.
Then he takes off his shirt.
His chest is broad and solid. There’s a slight give to it. Faint freckles dot his skin, easy to miss unless you’re paying attention (which you are. unreasonably so). A few silver hairs at the centre of his chest catch the light when he shifts.
His shoulders roll once, muscle moving with quiet efficiency. He looks warm under the lights. Real. Inconveniently human.
You briefly think that the building should consider switching pool disinfectants. Chlorine feels… excessive. There must be gentler options. Ones that don’t immediately cause lapses in judgment and moral decay.
Your eyes drop. And that’s when you see the swim trunks.
They’re unmistakably old. Dark, utilitarian, cut to survive training. Time has not been kind to them. Or maybe it’s actually been too kind. They sit low on his hips, snug around his thighs in a way that feels unreasonably provocative for a man who insists on virtue and modesty in all things.
“Please tell me those aren’t government issued.”
He pauses, his hand hovering near the draw string. He clears his throat, a faint, uncharacteristic flush creeping up his neck.
Do they give out standardized ‘New Agent’ kits when you graduate from the Academy ? Gun, badge, handcuffs, swim trunks and maybe a box of FBI-issued condoms. The packaging might even say: Property of the FBI. For tactical use only. Every drop of you belongs to the federal government.
“They are,” he admits resignedly. He looks down at the faded fabric for a moment, his thumb brushing the hem, as if he's mentally calculating the decades since he last stood on a Quantico pool deck. “These might actually be older than you are,” he adds in a low mutter, more to himself than to you.
“That’s so hot,” you blurt out.
He raises an eyebrow, a flicker of amusement crossing his otherwise controlled expression. No comment. Just a subtle shake of his head before he steps to the edge and slides into the water.
He pushes off the wall, water hissing around him, and glides forward.
Each stroke is precise and deliberate. His forearms tighten as his hands slice through the water, veins catching the light. His chest rises and falls. His wet hair clings to his forehead and temples, the ends occasionally brushing the back of his neck as he turns to breathe. His calves flex with each push, sending tiny waves across the lane.
He breathes with deliberate timing, neck stretching smoothly as he tilts his head, lips parting just enough to draw in air. Every rotation of his torso is economical, calculated. No wasted movement, no strain, just absolute command of his body.
With each stroke, the water sprays lightly across his torso. You notice the subtle curve of his abdomen. The way his shoulders shift with effort, his arms cut through the water with effortless authority, his back fans out with every stroke. The deep groove of his spine acting as a shoreline for the water racing over his skin.
He swims a clean, powerful crawl. Watching Aaron Hotchner exert himself is like stumbling upon a highly specific, high-budget fetish porn: ‘Busty competent dad in skimpy swimsuit’.
He finally drifts to the edge, arms resting on the tile, water dripping from his shoulders. “Well?” he asks. “How’s this lane?”
You perch on the edge of the pool, leaning forward slightly. Honestly, you were more busy picturing him in less chlorinated contexts than paying attention to the lights and shadows.
“The lane is fine,” you murmur, your gaze dropping to the water beaded on his collarbone.
You lean just an inch too far.
A splash.
Water envelops you.
He catches you instinctively, one arm on your back, and you emerge drenched, your face inches from his.
He brushes your hair away from your face. You briefly consider pretending to drown. Maybe that could get him to give you mouth-to-mouth. And also, it’d be dramatic enough to make him forget how cliché this is.
“Are you alright?” he asks.
You nod quickly. The war general in your head is being court-martialed. This is basically a death sentence for your credibility.
He doesn't move to let you go. If anything, his grip tightens. Your hand clings to his shoulder. Might as well seize the opportunity to fondle him a bit while you can.
“Was that on purpose?”
Your chest is brushing against his, water dripping between you, and it’s impossible to say no without sounding ridiculous.
“What do you think?”
He runs his thumb across your lips. You feel the way his hand cradles your face.
“I think you’re playing some kind of perverted game,” he whispers.
He leans in until your nose brushes against his. His eyes drop to your mouth with a look that is equal parts clinical and starved.
“I’ve handled people more… inventive than you, sweetheart,” he adds quietly. “I’ll find out what you’re up to eventually.”
You don’t let him interrogate you further.
The kiss is bruising.
He isn’t gentle. He handles you with the same crushing efficiency he used to cut through the water. His hands remain locked on your face, his fingers threading into your wet hair to tilt your head back. Claiming every inch of space you’ve tried to occupy all night.
His weight pins you firmly against the tiled edge of the pool. You feel the grit of the grout against your back. And the unyielding soft expanse of his chest against your front.
He groans into your mouth. Your lungs start to burn.
His lips are firm, slick with chlorine. You vaguely think that he’s trying to devour you. His tongue traces the seam of your lips.
Every time you try to pull him closer, his grip on your face tightens, his thumbs anchored firmly at your jaw to keep you exactly where he wants.
He shifts, his thigh slipping between yours to hold you steady against the tile. Just as you reach for the hem of his stupid FBI trunks, he pulls back.
His forehead rests against yours, his breathing ragged. He lets his hand drop from your face, though his thumb lingers for one last stroke across your swollen lips.
“This lane seems good enough to me,” he rasps.
He lets go of you and begins to swim away. Entirely unbothered.
Kiss the hand of a new prince to raise him to power, and you have only marked your own cheek for the executioner.
You stay anchored to the tile, shivering as the cold air hits your soaked skin.
married!Aaron Hotchner x bau!fem!reader
Genre: “enemies”-to-terrible-ideas, SMUT!!!
Summary: You save your coworker’s life and he fucks you as a thank-you? WOW! You can’t help but wonder how his wife feels about this particular expression of gratitude.
Warnings: MDNI (unprotected piv, ladyfingering, whipped cream maritozzi), infidelity, Aaron WHOREtchner, fertility talk nobody consented to, cigarettes, psychological warfare, toxic AF dynamics, Gideon in a robe jumpscare (my dick is hard). This takes place before s1, back when Hotch and Haley were trying for a baby, and Gideon was the Unit Chief!
Word Count: 8.9k (kill me?)
Dado's Corner: Idc if you think you’re too cool to reblog or comment and are just going to ghost-read this fic and move on with your day. TAKE A MOMENT to actually appreciate the details of the header (specifically the way it recreates the floor plan of a... messy hotel room) and tell me I’m a genius (example of the comments I expect to see: Wow, Phi! I can tell you spent valuable time of your life researching what hotel carpets look like. It looks gorgeous!). That said, tysm to my loves @alinathinkstoomuch , @sweetheartsocks & @hotchology for helping bring this fic back to life! And the biggest kiss to @pastelpinkflowerlife ’s brain for the request, I hope you enjoy it!
masterlist
amor fati
ˈa.mor ˈfaː.ti | noun (Latin)
1. The refusal to wish for another outcome; the deliberate choice to love what occurred simply because it did.
Riddle me this:
What’s stiff but short,
never quite your sort?
Promised grandeur, swore it’d last,
but finishes far, far too fast.
You hold it close. You curse. You pray.
It still disappoints you anyway.
You wish this verse were Hotch’s dick -
the length, the hype, the failing trick.
(Solution: the short end of the stick.)
But fate’s a clown and luck’s a prick,
and once again you draw ________
Which, frankly, was always short to begin with.
Because when the accommodation announces a last-minute room shortage (how professional…) and informs you that for five agents there are only three rooms available, Gideon, in his infinite wisdom as a cultured and experienced Unit Chief-
(conveniently the only one the BAU has ever had, so there’s no point of comparison… you simply have to accept him, his decisions, and his pending dementia)
-decides there is only one reasonable course of action.
He takes an entire double king-size honeymoon suite for himself. Morgan and Reid get shoved together into a double. And you?
You get Hotch.
Objectively the worst possible outcome of an already catastrophically fucked situation. The short end of the stick, anthropomorphized.
Eight glorious days of forced cohabitation follow.
Eight days of sleeping with the devil a few feet away, while you lie marooned on a twin bed whose mattress is so aggressively unforgiving you’ve resorted to medication just to remain a functioning member of society during daylight hours.
Add to that the long, soul-draining stakeouts - during which Gideon keeps pairing you with Hotch, possibly because no one else can truly stand him and you are, statistically speaking, the most expendable when the greater good requires a human sacrifice.
The package deal also includes: enduring his appalling small-talk skills, his despotic music taste, and an ungodly number of shared meals with Mr. I Won’t Order Fries Because I’m Eating Healthy and Have a Very Specific Meal Plan… who then proceeds to steal half of yours with his thick fingers anyway.
Somewhere along the way (between the stakeouts, the mattress, the fries, and the man) you feel another riddle forming in your head. Not in rhyme. You don’t have the energy for that anymore.
What kind of masochist would willingly sign up to endure Hotch's presence indefinitely and decide that yes, this is the man whose semen should be entrusted with the creation of another, smaller version of him?
Must be the money. Or maybe it’s the dick.
Still. How the fuck is this man married?
Unfortunately, you’re given ample time to sit with this mystery.
Because even though today you’ve wrapped up what is easily the most… draining… case of your BAU career, Gideon still gathers everyone into a circle after the local police briefing for his customary closing philosophical remarks and the ceremonial assignment of final paperwork.
And instead of offering an actual departure time (some vague window one to two hours after the speech concludes) he generously grants himself (and, by extension, all of you) an extra night.
Apparently, he doesn’t feel like flying more than three hours “this late.”
An easy, lighthearted choice for Gideon to make, considering he is not subjected to Aaron Hotchner at all. You are. Specifically, to his three precautionary alarms, each spaced exactly thirty minutes apart.
Every single fucking day, the first one goes off and Hotch is instantly upright and operational a full hour and a half before either of you needs to be alive. He never snoozes it. Not once. Which, frankly, renders the existence of the other two a personal affront.
And despite your very explicit death threats (turn off those alarms, Hotchner, or I will suffocate you with your own tie), once he is awake, alert, perfectly groomed, and already solving crimes in his tiny little head, he does not disable the rest.
He just… lets them happen.
You get violently jolted awake every single time you finally manage to drift off again. Instead of ninety blessed minutes of uninterrupted sleep, you’re served a shrill, inescapable reminder, on repeat, that you share a room with a sociopath.
You are exhausted. You hate him. You hate the alarms more.
And you have not yet accepted the horrifying truth that this will happen again tomorrow, unless you confiscate his phone right now, during this sacred window in which he would not even notice.
He is busy on a call with Haley. The masochist in question. Sorry. His wife.
“Aaron, did you massage both balls?”
It is, quite literally, the first thing you hear her saying the moment he answers. She sounds annoyed. Which makes sense, since you know he very deliberately did not call her yesterday.
“Haley-” Hotch starts, horror flashing across his face as he turns slowly toward you, as if only now realizing that you are, in fact, a sentient being fully equipped with functional ears.
He fumbles with the buttons, frantically trying to kill the speaker before your psyche suffers irreversible damage. The last thing you hear, before blessed radio silence, is: “You need to massage both of them very thoroughly, otherwise it’s useless.”
…Jeez.
You stare at the wall. And as you find yourself wondering whether he’s been dutifully performing fertility massages in the shower every morning (and, more alarmingly, whether that is in fact the intended function of the other two alarms) the need for a cigarette metastasizes into a matter of life-or-death urgency. Your hand moves on instinct, fishing the emergency pack out of your go-bag in record time.
You light one up before you even step onto the balcony, then turn back toward him so he can witness the full, indulgent, ecstatic pleasure of that first drag as it blooms across your face.
He lunges for you (and you’d swear the whole sequence unfolds in half-speed), one hand clapped over the phone’s speaker as he chokes out a strangled, “No, don’t-” just before you blow the smoke straight into his face.
Oof. Much better.
Hotch shuts his eyes.
He chases the hit the only way he can, dragging in a long, desperate breath through his nose. And somehow, knowing that even this pitiful approximation will never land the way it does for you only makes the cigarette taste sweeter.
A soft sound slips out of him as he exhales.
You make a concerted effort not to think about that.
“We made a promise.” He whispers, fixing you with one of his looks, holding the phone at arm’s length. “We were doing it together…”
Haley’s voice is still there, muffled through the speaker. He’s probably hearing her about as badly as you are, with the phone nowhere near his ear. He really is spectacularly bad at this husband thing.
You take another drag, deliberately angling it away from him, purely to deny him the pleasure. It’s achingly, intoxicatingly sensual to watch his eyes hunger after the gray ribbon as it billows and dissolves into the night, as though it owes him something he’s not allowed to claim.
“Well,” you say, “I think I deserve it after today.”
He studies you with those piercing dark eyes, openly concerned.
The longer the cigarette burns unused and Haley’s voice keeps echoing faintly from the phone, the more uncomfortable it all becomes. She calls his name. He doesn’t answer until the second time.
“Hey, honey,” he says at last, looking down. “You can tell me more when I’m back home. I really need to go finish arranging a couple of things. I’m sorry.”
Liar.
And still, you can’t get over the way his voice changes when he speaks to her. A lullaby reserved for the mighty, allowed to be soothed by it. A tenderness so dissonant with the man beside you it almost hurts to hear.
“See you soon.” He’s already moving toward you. “I love you.”
You need another drag.
He leans against the parapet beside you. Even as his gaze drifts toward the parking lot, toward the same anonymous cars you’re staring at, you can feel his warmth hovering a bare inch away on your right.
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asks quietly. Not as soft as before. But close.
“I don’t know, you tell me.”
“We don’t have to,” he adds. “Not now. If you don’t want to.”
Smoke blurs the license plates in front of you. Silence barely has time to settle before it’s broken by the rhythmic chime of Hotch’s fingers against the parapet. Sounds almost like bells. He always fidgets with his hands when he’s nervous.
“Are you about to tell me it’ll feel better if I talk about it instead of bottling it all up?” you ask.
You hear him sigh.
“No. That’s usually your line. I was going to ask you for a cigarette, actually.”
“You’ll ruin your streak,” you jest, but your hand is already fishing the pack out of your jacket.
“Well, you broke first. So technically, I already won… might as well start again on even ground.”
“Didn’t you say this wasn’t a competition, but you doing the right thing… setting an example…” You slide a cigarette out of the pack and immediately lose track of the lighter. You pat your pockets. Pants - no. Jacket - also no. “Moral high ground? What was it… wait-” You check inside the jacket again. The lighter magically reappears. Of course. You hold the cigarette and lighter out to him. “Oh, right. You were old enough to stop fooling around?”
He looks at you and takes the cigarette straight from your lips. Hollows his cheeks, kissing it passionately.
“What the fuck, Hotchner?” You swat his arm on reflex.
He doesn’t even dignify that with a response.
You watch, seething, as the trace of your lipstick on the filter marks his mouth when his wedding ring shifts the cigarette away. Hotch casually leans back against the parapet, elbows propped, gaze drifting toward the parking lot while smoke slips from his lips.
“That blue Honda’s from North Carolina,” he remarks, conversationally.
Fuck him. And fuck his stupid car plates. Another thing of yours he’s stolen.
You glare at him. He remains entirely unbothered.
“You’re acting like a child…” You scoff, roll your eyes, and surrender by lighting the cigarette that was supposed to be his. You don’t have the energy to spar with his bullshit right now. Frankly, you’re not sure how he does. Residual adrenaline, maybe. Speaking of which-
“Did you at least tell Haley?”
He hesitates. “I… couldn’t. Why do you think the cigarette is for?”
“You didn’t tell your wife that the reason we’re staying the night is because you ran straight toward a house with an active shooter and no protection, and that if I hadn’t chased your ass, you’d be coming home in a coffin?”
“You disobeyed Gideon’s orders by running after me,” he counters calmly.
“I - I - did?” You bark out a laugh. “I disobeyed Gideon? That’s your takeaway? What the hell is going on in that head of yours, Hotchner? Are you losing it?”
“Perhaps,” he concedes. “But for what it’s worth, I went in because I knew you had my back. I never truly put myself at risk.”
“You walked in to negotiate with a man whose finger was already on the trigger and aimed at your completely unprotected head, I wouldn’t call that ‘no risk.’”
“You took the shot first,” he smiles (smiles?) “Didn’t you?”
“You are fucking insane.”
“It was the only way. Four children are going home to their parents tonight because of us.” And tomorrow, he’ll go home to his wife (whole) because of you. “If we’d waited for SWAT, it would’ve been too late.”
He pauses. The gold of his wedding band catches the light, half consumed by the eclipse of his head bowed over it. “Also, I needed confirmation about whether your death threats were real. Turns out, when you had the shot to get rid of me, you chose to pull me out instead.”
He shifts closer. Ash slips from the end of his cigarette, falling between your hands, briefly wrapping around your finger before you wipe it against the parapet.
“You really thought I was serious?” You laugh. He can’t possibly be that naïve, can he?
“I thought you were a woman of your word,” he says, lightly. Almost teasing.
“Maybe I just didn’t want to deal with the extra paperwork.”
“Or maybe you care about me.”
You commit the single biggest, dumbest rookie mistake listed (bolded, underlined, and practically laminated) in the Big Book of Stupid Things Stupid Rookies Should Never Do: you turn toward him without thinking. Shit.
He greets you with a half-smile and smoke slipping from his nose.
You wish you were immune to Aaron Hotchner in moments like this - when he’s not posturing, not bragging, not currying favor with his superiors, but simply being himself.
Worse still is the way he looks at you now, as if he already knows the answer and is merely waiting for you to acknowledge it. He doesn’t ask for reassurance; your silence, or the way you hold his gaze, seems to be response enough for him.
“You should probably wash your clothes in the sink when you’re done with that,” you deadpan, tipping your chin toward his cancer stick. “And hope they dry by morning. If Haley finds out you’re smoking again, I’m not taking the blame.”
“I’m the only one accountable for my actions,” he says, almost playfully - like he’s reciting a line he knows you’d make him repeat if he didn’t already have it memorized.
“Exactly.”
“Could I borrow your hair dryer later?” he asks.
“No. You get to do this all by yourself. Like a big boy, Hotchner.” Your cigarette isn’t finished yet, but you can feel the tide turning - and you know if you let it drag on even a second longer, you’ll lose to him again. So you stub it out against the parapet before he can.
“Thank you.” he whispers, right as the ember dies against the metal.
“Whatever,” you shrug, but his half-smile infects your own anyway.
His pent-up look is so hideous it could turn anyone to stone. You’re fairly certain you’ve just fallen victim to the gorgon yourself, caught the moment you finally, truly see him. Oxygen moving through your lungs grows expeditiously viscous the instant Hotch takes a single step toward you.
Your footing, your exit strategy, the remark poised on your tongue, your awareness - all of it petrifies when his big hands rush to cup your face and his lips inevitably collide with yours as if it were nothing at all.
Paralyzed.
You feel the fine grit of every distinct particle of cigarette ash on his fingertips as they caress down your cheeks, the gold band on his finger resting against you as cold as your own unmoving skin, and yet the mere taste of the nicotine rush from his mouth sends you into sublimation.
Solid to air. Evanescent. Weightless, undone, no longer held in place by anything at all except his hands, roaming helplessly on your body, drawing you in flush against him.
“Hotch-” you warn him.
A gritty hum answers you - all you’re given before he shamelessly deepens the kiss, drawing your tongue into his mouth. Moans into you like a man starved. A fucking addict in withdrawal. You know gentleness is beyond him right now, even if he tried to reach for it.
Not that you could ask for it. Not that you truly want it. And certainly not from a man you are unavoidably aware belongs, irrevocably, to someone else.
“Say you don’t want me and I’ll stop,” he slurs, swallowing the words because he can’t quite bring himself to articulate them properly.
A lie by omission if you’ve ever heard one - offered just convincingly enough to let him pretend he’s granting you a choice, while knowing full well he’s already beyond the concept of stopping.
He never specifies what, exactly, he’ll stop. And it certainly isn’t the way his hand keeps finding the flesh of your ass, squeezing, palming, returning as if on instinct, each touch underlining how hollow his promises really are. Much like his head.
Does that little human brain of his even fire enough synapses to register the risk?
What happens if one of your colleagues - say, your boss, or Morgan and Reid - gets the bright idea to step outside for some air, or to investigate the suspicious noise that keeps punctuating the silence, one that sounds alarmingly like a very large hand smacking against an ass cheek every now and then, because a certain someone seems downright incapable of containing his enthusiasm while toying with his coworker’s ass?
No? Fine. Just you, then.
This is what happens when Hotch thinks with his dick. Not that you’re complaining about that particular executive function taking over. You love his dick… dickhead.
You love the way his mouth turns reverent at your throat, worshipping the pulse there, nipping at your earlobe. The way he nuzzles his profile needily along your cheek before pressing a wet kiss to your jaw, as you melt beneath his touch.
Not until you hear the soft slide of a window opening on Gideon’s side of the balcony.
Fuck.
You both jerk back against the parapet, snapping into an HR-approved distance in the narrow window of time you have to pretend nothing just happened.
“Thought it was your voices out here,” Gideon greets you, stepping onto his balcony in just an amenities robe and leaning against the railing.
Hotch’s swallow is way too loud. Neurotic. The sound ricochets in your ears and reminds you of all the other sounds your body is capable of making, if only the drop below were fatal enough to justify jumping.
(Has Gideon reached the age where he needs a hearing aid? Evidently not, given that he’s standing right here.)
“You two, really…” Gideon sighs.
Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. You can feel your heartbeat thudding high in your throat, the exact spot that’s probably still damp from Hotch’s mouth. You can visualize it catching the moonlight as Gideon studies you pensively.
You hesitate. Do you wipe it away now, or would that only make things worse - telegraphing nerves to the man who practically invented profiling, nerves you are very much not supposed to have unless you’re hiding something?
“I don’t care if you smoke,” Gideon says, unimpressed. “As long as you do it outside. You can stop looking at me like I’m about to ground you.”
You laugh it off, but the silence from Hotch behind you is perturbing in a way that settles straight between your shoulder blades.
“I just wanted to let you know I got a call from the pilot, we’re clear to fly back around ten tomorrow morning. Which means we’ll be in Quantico by lunchtime, if we’re lucky. You can tell your loved ones so they don’t worry - and call me instead.” Gideon smiles somewhere behind your head.
Ouch. Poor Hotchner, getting scolded by his own daddy.
“I will this time, Jason,” Hotch says, and as if on cue, his hand slides so that only his pinkie and ring finger touch yours on the parapet. The ignominious cold of his wedding ring against your skin sends a shiver straight down your spine. There is suddenly no oxygen reaching your brain.
Riddle me this: What the fuck is he doing right now? Does his dick actually get harder cheating on his wife right in front of his boss? What exactly is he trying to prove?
“You better do, Aaron,” Gideon adds.
Hotch still doesn’t move.
You don’t either - not without drawing attention to whatever bullshit this is. A power play? Some deranged display of affection you never asked for? Something subconscious unravelling inside his head?
For half a second, you consider whether it would pass as an accident if you shoved him off the parapet and made sure he landed headfirst. That would be subconscious too, wouldn’t it?!
“Well,” Gideon says, already turning away, “I’m going to tell the other two now…”
Gideon leaves. Authority exits stage left. Consequences, apparently, decide to loiter. Back inside, the last thing you expect from dick-measuring-contest Hotch is for him to be giggling.
You’re halfway through shutting the curtains to avoid any… inconveniences. No. Prevention. Still, not really. Damage control. Whatever.
“Hotch, really, I’m serious - what the fuck did you think you were do-” it becomes very difficult to finish a sentence when his lips surge on yours.
“Shh,” he murmurs, your face swallowed once more by the warmth of his broad palms.
Another kiss.
He cages you in, flush against the window and the curtain, and suddenly there’s nothing else - it feels like you’re embraced by nothing but him. He’s all you can see. All he lets you see.
“I don’t want to lose-” He shuts you up with a kiss. “-this. This… job.” Another kiss. He’s giggling again. “Because of you-”
His dimples cut deep into his flushed cheeks as he pulls back, and you’re struck by the inequitable certainty that he’s never looked more handsome than he does right now. (Okay. Maybe you keep that part to yourself.)
“Gideon could’ve seen you straddling me,” Hotch murmurs in your ear as his hand rides up your skirt. Heat creeps up your neck when he traces down the inside of your panties. He drags through your slick folds, applying more pressure with two fingers as he slides them over your core. “And still, he wouldn’t believe you get this wet for a married man.”
“Oh, you’re really flipping this, it’s you - fuck you,” you gasp as he circles your clit through the fabric.
“You think I’m wrong? You don’t sound like I’m wrong,” he sneers.
He keeps stroking your clit, wantonly picking up the pace. One of your legs hooks around his waist without a single conscious thought, and he catches it immediately, holding it tight as you drag him closer until there’s not exactly that much space left to pretend you don’t want this.
Your whole body arches into his touch, fingers clawing into his firm biceps, nails leaving crescent-moon marks as you bite back every sound, stubbornly determined not to give him the satisfaction. (Women used to fight for their rights, you remind yourself.)
“I’m just trying to thank you,” and he kisses you light as feather. Please.
“And how does your wife feel about the way you express gratitude?” you whisper against his ear, sultry on purpose. A breathy little note slips from your throat at the very end, purely to beguile him.
Hotch looks at you like the air’s been knocked clean out of his lungs. You smile back at him, achingly sweet.
He slurs your name in that galling, infuriatingly condescending tone as his hand drifts lower, pushing your soaked panties aside without a moment’s hesitation. Two thick fingers slide in far too easily, sinking deep in between your folds.
“Fuck-” you gasp. You hate yourself for even remembering just how devastatingly good he feels when he stretches you like this.
He slides all the way out, leaving your hips chasing his fingers on pure instinct, before deliberately returning to torment you - easing back in only to the knuckles while his thumb bears down on your clit.
“How would she feel,” you needle him, “if she knew how hard you got every morning this past week? Waking up in the same room as me… having to get up an hour and a half early just to make it go away?”
He manhandles you without warning, steering you farther into the room until the back of your leg bumps the desk. With a careless sweep of your arm, you send his rogue paperwork skidding to the floor (good luck reordering those, Hotchner) pages scattering across the carpet as you hop up onto the wood.
You fist the loose fabric of his shirt and yank him in. Spread your legs. Hook them around his hips. Feel the solid… weight of him press right into your wet core. He gets harder and harder at just that.
What. A. Loser.
In a rush, he strips your panties away.
You catch the way his pupils blow wide as he thumbs over the sheer wet spot with barely disguised hunger before yanking them off entirely. They land squarely on a report - what kind, you have no idea. Unlike a certain someone, you’re not nearly enough of a workaholic to identify paperwork by font alone.
Silver linings.
A breathless tangle follows - your teeth catching his lower lip, his hands crashing into yours as he reaches for your chest while you fumble blindly for his back, both of you too rushed and desperate to coordinate a single move.
“Did you want me to touch you-” he hums, his mouth wet against your cheek, middle and ring fingers pumping firmly in and out of your swollen gummy walls. A shiver tears through you. You don’t think you’ll ever get used to the cold kiss of the ring every time his hand disappears inside you.
“Like this,” he adds, and his free hand comes up just in time to cover your mouth, smothering the moan you can’t stop when his fingers curl perfectly into your sweet spot. “Every morning you watched me step out of the shower just to grab my clothes?”
Okay. Fine. He can gloat. Annoyingly, offensively, he does look hot like that.
All wet hair and trailing droplets, hot steam spilling in behind him, lashes still damp and somehow longer for it. Water sliding down those slanted shoulders, down his - unfortunately - freshly shaved chest, until the whole room smells like his aftershave and, inexplicably, cherry blossom shaving cream.
(Aaron Hotchner is so feminist he can’t even escape the pink tax? Please. As if.)
Droplets trace the softer plane of his stomach, slipping beneath the towel slung obscenely low on his hips, the sharp V there catching the light and your attention alike. Something shifts beneath the fabric every time he moves...
And just when you think he’s done enough damage, he casually swipes the wet fringe back with one hand. No ring during the shower, so for a split second he still feels… available - at least in your head.
You don’t even bother feeling guilty as his biceps flex, swell, go indecently solid (sleeper build fully activated) only for that one stubborn, coarse lock to drop right back onto his forehead, like it’s doing this on purpose.
Hell yes.
Oh. Sorry. Right. You’re supposed to be humiliating him back - and you very pointedly refuse to examine whether the smug curve of his mouth right now is because he clocked exactly where your thoughts just wandered.
“When you touched yourself in the shower, were you picturing me like this, or your wife?”
He scoffs, but offers no defense. No denial. He just looks at you wary. Like you’ve just put your finger on something you weren’t meant to see so clearly.
And the way his thumb joins the motion at your clit, the way he keeps fingering you so sloppily that the obscene sounds of your body fill the room more than your own voice - as if that alone is his answer - feels less like a rebuttal and more like… a reward?
“Is that why you never take the ring off?” you cry out. “Does - oh my god - does it turn you on, fingering me with – fuck - that?”
The words snag in your throat and dissolve into a sound so filthy you didn’t know you were capable of making it (Gideon is, incidentally, still very much alive and sojourning on the other side of the wall). You go light-headed, stars bursting behind your eyes every time his fingers sink deeper.
“What, sweetheart?” he coos.
“-suck my dick and balls,” you choke out in one breath.
He might be laughing at that. Or maybe that’s just the rush roaring in your ears as you claw at his shoulders, cutting off circulation in a desperate attempt to haul him closer as heat pools low and molten in your stomach.
Your head tips back, pleasure flaring so hot it feels like you might combust. He’s there instantly, mouth at your neck, the other hand steady at your back, soothing the frantic pulse under his wet lips.
“I’ve got you this time,” he murmurs there (who cares?)
His words land like a spell; you end up knocking more papers off the desk, dizzy as the ecstasy crests. Your orgasm billows and crashes through you in tidal waves, sweeping you off your feet.
You feel your walls flutter around his fingers as he rides you through it, until your head goes limp on his shoulder, boneless, his hand still steady at your waist.
His fingers are slick and glistening with you. So is his wedding ring.
You catch the caprice in his eyes as he looks at you and shamelessly draws his fingers into his mouth, sucking them clean. He hums, indulgent, eyelids melting shut as he savors you, and releases them with a lewd pop, the ring nudged higher on his finger.
You wish it could choke him. You also wish he’d fuck you right now, because that was so, so, so hot.
All smug, he starts, “Are you alri-”
You don’t let him finish.
You press your hand flat over his mouth. His gasp comes out muffled, warm against your palm, leaving it faintly damp. On instinct, you drag your hand down his lips, the dazed, almost drunk look on his face making it feel inevitable.
You press your index and middle finger between his mouth, still carrying a trace of tobacco from your cigarette, and he accepts them without hesitation.
You feel his tongue slide along the inside of your fingers, the light scrape of his teeth as you push them deeper, the pull of his cheeks hollowing around them. Another broken sound breaks free when you finally pull them back out.
“Fuck, Hotchner,” you groan.
The whore smiles back. He loosens his tie and drapes it over the back of the desk chair. You shrug out of your top and fling it somewhere over his head, your hands skating over the firm slope of his shoulders, disastrously enchanted by him. You start on the top buttons of his shirt-
-and he stops you.
His hands clamp around your hips, hauling you to the very edge of the desk. He grabs a handful of your ass and pulls you hard against the rigid line in his slacks. You roll your hips instinctively, angling yourself just right to feel all of him. Oh, fuck.
“Can you feel what you’re doing to me?” he groans through clenched teeth, rocking forward and dragging himself over your folds, landing perfectly against your clit.
“No,” you lie.
He chuckles - you keep getting distracted by his dimples, which is frankly becoming a liability.
“Well,” he says, pleased with himself, “don’t worry. You will.” (Boooo! Disappointing rebuttal, Hotchner!)
If you hadn’t already fucked this freak while you were both drunk out of your minds, you’d tease him back - ask if he’s referring to the inevitable thirty seconds he’ll last once he’s inside you.
Unfortunately, you do know better. You know exactly what you’re dealing with. You might’ve even fantasized about it. So the swallow that tightens your throat is probably nerves. Or anticipation. Annoying either way.
He buries his face in the soft center of your chest, dexterous hands spanning your breasts through the bra, squeezing with something feral, unthinking (is he in heat?). He taunts you with kisses there, then trails his wet mouth upward along your clavicle, to your neck, where he nips and sucks at your skin with his teeth before soothing it with his silver tongue.
Ever the overachiever, Aaron Big Hairy Hands Hotchner somehow manages, all at once, to use your tit as a stress ball (for his pleasure and, infuriatingly, yours), leave you fairly certain he’s branded you with a hickey somewhere along your neck, and - drumroll - magically unhook your bra one-handed.
Wow.
If there were ever a clearer sign that this man is married, this would be it. His wife must be thrilled about this particular domestic skill of his.
If you had any real say in the matter - which you don’t, lacking the legal standing, the joint bank account, the stamina to tolerate his infuriating habits for the rest of your life, and the sincere desire to procreate with him - you’d still have to admit he’s devastatingly gifted with his mouth. When he isn’t using it to talk, obviously.
Case in point: the sound you make, embarrassingly louder than intended, when his tongue finds your peaking nipple, laving it slowly while his hand methodically toys with the other nub.
“If anyone knocks to complain about the noise,” he mutters against your chest, voice muffled and haughty, “you’re the one opening the door.” He nips down a little harder for emphasis, teeth adding just enough friction.
You choke on another sound.
“Shit, Aaron-” He smiles when you say his name. Fucking loser. “You’re so good.”
“I know.”
You roll your eyes. They promptly stay lodged somewhere behind your skull as pleasure floods in - because, infuriatingly, this is one thing you can’t fault him for. And sharing desks, rooms, fries (and, you hope soon enough, fluids), spending this much time prisoner in his orbit, has made you very good at profiling that smug-on-the-surface ass of his.
(Ergo, you recognize a praise kink when you see one.)
“No, Aaron,” you insist, breathless, “really. You’re so – so - good at this.”
He moans your name into your breast, shameless. His hand slides lower, bunching your skirt up in his fist until his fingers find your clit again, circling it slow - because he’s a giver, because he wants to earn it, because he wants to be told again.
Your eyes snag on the strained fabric of his grey (yum) slacks, stretched to its limits, the thick outline of his dick twitching in what you very reasonably interpret as pure, unfiltered excitement. The darkened spot right where the tip presses is an indulgent little detail… one you’d very much like to greet with your own tongue.
(See? Textbook.)
You bite your bottom lip. The fact that he still has half his shirt buttoned while you’re basically naked - especially once Inseminator 3000 (After Dark Edition) finishes with your skirt - feels profoundly antifeminist.
“Are you comfortable sitting like this?” he asks, those worried, wet-puppy eyes fixed on you as you work at his buttons, manhandling his arms like a Ken doll just to rid him of the stupid shirt.
“Sure,” you shrug, tossing it onto the growing disaster on the floor.
He pulls a face - constipated, like he’s just bitten into something violently sour (a casual Tuesday, really). You read it instantly as you should’ve folded it, the way he folded your skirt, now resting primly beside his tie on the back of the desk chair. Whoops. Maybe he should’ve asked his wife…
“Hotchner, you really have to wash that shirt later,” you blurt. “It really, really, really stinks like smoke.” You punctuate it with a wet kiss to his shoulder, then look up at him, brows raised.
“I– I will. Must be the cotton-” Right. The premium cotton. One hundred percent natural, hand-picked by virgins at dawn, spun into thread by blessed artisans in Italy, stitched by tailors who’ve never known hardship. Yada yada. Your ass. You can practically hear the obnoxious old-money flex echoing in your head - even if, for once, he isn’t actually doing it.
“Thanks for worrying so much,” he adds. There’s something faintly melancholic in his tone, a dissonant buzz like all his alarms going off at once, when he cups your chin and tilts your face up, pressing a kiss to your mouth that tastes far too earnest for your liking. He lingers, thumb stroking the corner of your lips.
Where did the hoe go?
“You still cool with this?” you ask - checking in, technically - while your hand has very much wandered to his boob chest and is now lowkey fondling it. It would be awkward if he suddenly remembered his vows while you’re halfway to tonguing his nipple, right?
“Absolute- Jesus Christ,” he gasps. In your defense, he has very sensitive nipples.
Belts, though - you’re like a magpie. There’s something about the thickness where the leather folds into the buckle that makes your mouth water.
You’ve noticed it - unfortunately, far too often - how the belts he wears always sit just right, cinching his hips so profanely well that when your fingers move there it feels like déjà vu. Muscle memory, born of how many times you’ve already fantasized about this.
Your hands tremble a little as you work the buckle, brushing the smooth, polished leather - and fine, before his laser-beam eyes can lock onto you, you set it neatly on the chair. The slacks follow. You are not, however, entrusted with the folding.
(Unsurprising.)
(Rude.)
The restraint this requires deserves a medal. There’s a very real side quest screaming at you to bury your face in that bulge. Damn.
“There,” you say lightly once he’s finished carefully creasing and fussing over a pair of grey slacks that softly smell like tobacco and… bear a damp mark. “Happy now, Hotchner?”
“Jesus,” he sighs. He catches your wrist (hot) and guides it closer to his erection (extra hot). Your hand flares like it’s caught fire. Flames race up your arm, fed by nothing but strong wind until the heat spreads through the rest of your body. “Touch me.”
(Oh, Jesus, touch me? Denial is a river in Egypt. Your husband is gay.)
You trace the damp outline at the head through his boxers, letting your hand glide up and down his thick length before circling back to thumb the tip again.
You’re not entirely sure whether the sudden clench low in your… body is because of the very beautiful dick in front of you, or because the breathy, high sound he makes does things to your clit… ears. Ears. Through the haze, you barely register him rushing to free himself of his boxers, moving so fast his dick almost bounces straight into your hands.
“Damn, Hotchner, you’re so impatient,” you tease - purely for psychological warfare, obviously, because wow. You hate clichés, you really do, but his dick somehow looks even better than the first time you saw it. (Probably because you were drunk. Probably.)
“Don’t lie to me, I know all you want right now is my dick stretching that tight little pussy.”
Ok…?
Who taught him that? Has he been watching porn since you last left him unsupervised? The comeback curdles in your throat, and you have too much pride to simply say yes. (Yes, please?)
He’s already gloating.
You’re bewitched by the way the gold glints and shifts as his fist works him in a few slow strokes. You find yourself wondering whether the cool bite of the metal against his overheated skin feels as good as it did when his fingers were inside you.
You lift your palm toward his mouth; he spits into it (hot.)
So much so that you’re fairly certain you’re slicking the desk beneath you (and you really hope he doesn’t point it out) as you pump him from the base, overwhelmed by the sheer, dense weight of him settling into your hand.
His mouth crashes into yours (less a kiss than an open-mouthed whimper) before he swats your hand away, breath breaking around a desperate, unfinished “Please, or I-”
Booooo.
His broad palm presses to the center of your chest, easing you flat against the desk, lifting one leg to rest over his shoulder. “Are you sure this is comfortable for you?” he asks softly, thumb tracing the side of your calf before he kisses it.
So much for the wild, rough sex you were expecting.
“I am, Aaron. Don’t worry about me.”
He answers with a smile that’s almost too sweet for the situation, then bends to claim your lips again. He drifts to your ear, and a shiver crawls up your spine to settle exactly where his mouth nibbles.
“How come you’re wetter now than before?”
He punctuates the question by slapping the heavy length of himself against your puffy clit. The sound is absolutely lewd. He does it again. And again - careless of the bow in your back, careless of everything - until you have to fight not to pout and whine when his heat leaves you as he straightens, attention snagged by something just out of sight behind your head.
“Something wrong?” you ask.
He shakes his head, mutters something that barely escapes his chest, then reaches past you. There’s a dull thump behind your head, like something hitting the surface of the desk face-down. Whatever it is, it does something to him.
He dips back down to latch onto your nipples, mouth hot and reverent for a heartbeat, murmuring, “God, you’re so beautiful,” before pulling away again.
You clap a hand over your own mouth to smother the sound when his bulbous head starts gliding up and down your folds, dipping not even an inch at your entrance before dragging back to your clit, grinding himself down again.
He spits where his flushed head presses to you. You can feel slick drip between your thighs like honey.
“Remember who’s right on the other side of the wall, alright?” he murmurs, tapping the wall twice with his knuckles.
“You’re so fucking fun- oh fuck,” you choke into your fist just in time as he finally buries all of himself inside you.
Then he pulls out completely.
“Told you to be quieter, sweetheart.”
“Are you this much of an asshole when you fuck your wife too?” you snap back.
He answers by slamming hard into you again, hard. Another billow of white-hot pleasure consumes your body. At least he commits to it.
Your head tips back, mouth parting, as if something molten and gilded floods you from the inside out, only to be battered by restless winds that toss you everywhere at once. You’re buffeted and doomed.
You feel your walls clench and clamp around him, stretching you so, so, good that you almost understand the appeal of patience - of tolerating his endless bullshit - if this is what his dick feels like at the end of the day.
He lowers himself over you, crowding your space. He looks massive like this, shoulders broad, body a wall of heat and gluttonous weight.
“Do you have such a dirty mouth with the other guys you fuck,” he asks, hovering near your lips, “or are you only mean with me?” He claims your mouth in the same breath, kissing you hard, loud, like he’s showing off.
You feel him twitch inside you, like his body is begging him to move despite the careful mask of control. He never sounds less than earnest when he says things like this - smug to anyone else, maybe, but there’s always that edge underneath. That selfish hint of jealousy. Like he hates the idea that you aren’t entirely his.
What a greedy man.
“You might be surprised, but I go completely quiet if I get fucked right.”
He bites his lip, that stupid, infuriating smile flashing the second anyone so much as tosses him the idea of a challenge into his orbit (no glove required this time since you’re letting him take it raw. Ok… this one really sucked).
His hand slides to your hip and he starts rocking into you with fervor, driving his dick in and out of you like he’s got something to prove to you. Your legs are already folded tight against your chest beneath his weight, the angle humiliatingly perfect, reducing you to a whimpering mess as your eyes roll back.
He nips at the swell of your breast when your back arches up into him, and suddenly he’s everywhere - so much so you can’t tell where he starts and where you end, and yet you distinctly feel all of him, every throbbing vein of his thick cock grinding insistently into your walls.
Your fingers scrabble for purchase, dipping into his shoulders, then his biceps, desperate for something to steady you as his pace turns rougher.
“Does this feel good?” he asks, and the wet, obscene sound of it all seems to echo inside your skull when his hand presses to your lower belly, claiming the undeniable proof of how deep he really is.
“Yes - yes, you do feel good – fuck - when you commit to it,” you cry, words loosening and tangling together, collapsing into each other like one of those impossible Irish place names - Glassillaunvealnacurra, (located in the county of Galway): Little green island of the mouth of the weir.
It’s never resonated more than it does right now, as he hits your sweet spot and you’re still fighting to sound coherent, to convince him you possess the vocabulary of a fully grown adult while your body very clearly has other priorities.
You start matching his rhythm, meeting him halfway, chasing it. Your walls suddenly clamp hard around him, like it’s all tipping into too much.
“Jesus,” he hisses through his teeth, mouth falling open. “Don’t do that too often, or I’m not lasting as long as you think I will.”
“Need a break, Hotchner?”
He hums back, pleased, then leans down for another kiss. You breathe into each other’s mouths, unguarded, eyes locked as if you’re both checking – (dick) measuring (contest) - the damage you’re doing.
It’s so hot.
A dark, knowing smile curls on your lips at the exact same moment it blooms on his. You tip your head forward and steal it from him with a kiss.
Centuries of literature about soulmates, angelic women driving chosen men to abandon their humanity for something metaphysical - and your own road-to-Damascus moment hits you now.
It lands clean, without splintering you into a thousand pieces: that with his very ordinary, almost classic Disney-prince smile, the too-big-and-pointy nose, the smug eyes, Aaron (does he even have a middle name?) Hotchner (title? lineage? the second? the third?) was probably engineered by a higher power (a woman, thank you Mama Hotchner) to be your perfect fuck… buddy? Colleague? Fellow associate?
Fuck friend, if you were friends. Because the two of you together fuck on an almost transcendental plane. And if he weren’t married, you might even have the nerve to tell him you’ve finally identified a purpose for his otherwise profoundly meaningless life.
“Oh my god- just like that,” you moan as he rolls his hips and finds you perfectly, the impact ringing straight through you.
He’s pistoning into you now, relentless. Something goes skidding off the desk - there’s a dull, graceless crash, then the muted shatter of something that sounds like glass swallowed by carpet. You’re too dizzy to look. So is he. He tips his head forward onto your shoulder, breath breaking against your salty skin.
You tense all at once, toes curling where your feet rest on his shoulders as his hand circles your aching clit. The rooftop vanishes. The same night where you were carelessly smoking, blurring license plates, opens back up, limpid and vast. You’re drenched in starlight, gilded.
The pain is sharp enough to pull sounds from your throat before you can stop them, but what follows is so achingly sweet you never want it to end. There is no part of you that wants escape from it. Your body yields, your thoughts scatter, your soul settles - finding rest nowhere else but in him.
“Aaron-” is all you manage.
It isn’t pain of the body alone, though your body does not escape it. It participates fully, trembling, responding. And yet what you feel goes beyond flesh.
“Wow… look at you,” he rasps. Your walls are still fluttering, pulsing tight around him, and he doesn’t let up - keeps thrusting, keeps stroking your clit with the same ruthless focus, staying with you through the last shattering waves of your ecstasy.
A thin, high sound slips from his mouth as you writhe, oversensitive, his rhythm turning frantic. He folds down over you, kisses your lips, then trails a wet path to your ear.
“Can I-” he asks, sheepish.
“Yes, Aaron.” Your hand slides over his back, tracing the broad muscles there, keeping him exactly where he is. “Please. Don’t move.”
You seal the unspoken (though you know exactly what he’s asking for) permission with a soft kiss to his mouth, lips flushed pink and swollen, unmistakably marked by how many times he’s already tasted you tonight.
He moans into it, hips jerking as you feel each pulse of his heat spill into you, the way he fucks his release deeper and deeper into your pussy, until he finally gives in - hollowed out - collapsing between the swell of your breasts.
“Do you think we’ll still be employed by tomorrow?” you ask, fingers slipping absently into his hair, threading there, even if whatever this is only exists on borrowed time.
You feel his chuckle rumble through your chest, low enough it almost kick-starts your heart again, like a defibrillator.
“Jason-” Oh, for fuck’s sake. Of course he calls your boss by his first name, absolute teacher’s pet. “-sleeps with earplugs ever since that case we had in Iowa,” he adds. “Remember the newlyweds?”
“Oh my god, yes. I could hear them all the way from the other end of the corridor,” you groan. “You were closer, right? Must’ve been hell.”
“You have no idea,” he says, chuckling again. “So… small mercies. At least on that front.”
“Right,” you huff trough your nose. “I don’t think we were that bad, though. Right?”
“Not bad at all,” he repeats, smirking.
You roll your eyes. You’re fairly certain he’s talking about something else entirely.
Still, he’s not quite as disposable as you imagined. Not when he’s careful easing you down from the desk, not when he takes his time cleaning you up with a tenderness you absolutely did not earn and certainly did not request.
Of course, any illusion of growth evaporates the moment he starts treasure-hunting your bra and panties from around the room, launching into a condescending lecture about procedure.
Apparently, even in the heat of the moment, garments should be discarded with intention - placed neatly and thoughtfully - rather than “launched indiscriminately,” thus sparing oneself the moral failing of later having to wear them “crumpled and compromised.”
“You know,” you deadpan, “if you wanted a souvenir, you could’ve just snagged my panties and tucked them into the Barbie Dream Closet you call a go-bag instead of inventing all of this.”
You watch, fascinated, as his face goes entirely, spectacularly pink in record time.
“I’m joking, Hotchner. Relax. No need to get all pent-up.”
Unlike his theory on orderly undressing, you’re increasingly convinced chaos is the superior system, everything is right where you can see it.
You spot your cigarette pack immediately (half-open, a couple already making a bid for freedom), sitting beside the wreckage of whatever just shattered on the floor, ergo, the mystery object that took a dive off the desk a few moments ago.
A frame. Is this Hotch’s?
You pick it up gingerly, trying not to bleed.
Your stomach may be folded clean in half, but you cannot deny that Haley looks absolutely ethereal in white.
Well.
You rummage for whatever that FBI-issued compartmentalization bullshit was supposed to teach you… anything that might buy you one quiet cigarette before guilt comes crashing in.
You slide the glass door open to the balcony and lean into the frame, letting the night breathe back into you.
“Want a smoke?” you ask.
“Sure,” he says, already positioning himself opposite you, back against the door, holding it ajar so the breeze drifts inside. In your head, at least, the airflow feels intentional, like physics itself is trying to draw a clean, hygienic, line between you.
He does that infuriatingly hot thing you only ever see in edgy rom-coms: lights your cigarette for you, cupping the flame with his broad hand, shielding it from the wind until you finally get your hit.
The flame flickers, and in that brief glow you catch how earnestly he’s looking at you, how soft his smile turns when your eyes meet. Shit. You blow the smoke outward like you’re supposed to, but the wind betrays you, curling it right back in, clinging to your clothes, your skin, drifting toward him anyway.
You pass him the cigarette. His fingers linger on yours.
You hate how reliably hot it is when he hollows his cheeks, how his face shifts from constipated to almost human (relaxed would be generous) the deeper the smoke settles in his lungs. The ritual repeats: he exhales into the night, the smoke loops back, and then the cigarette is returned to you, warm from his fingers. Back and forth.
Shared breath. Shared silence.
And you think – unhelpfully - about how he seems more faithful to you in these moments than to the person he’s sworn loyalty to. About how that same softness in his voice, the one he reserves for her, carries the weight of his biggest lies.
You wonder if one day he’ll manage to deceive you just as effortlessly as he’s deceiving Haley now.
Phi's Corner: I’m sorry, friends... my eyes gave up halfway through rereading this all in one go (instead of the tiny chunks I wrote it in), so if anything’s wonky or not flowing quite right… I’m sorryyyyyy I’m going to sleep now!!
AAAAA bellissima, tranquilla forse ho esagerato io a definirla una relazione tossica. In realtà la reader sa sempre benissimo cosa ha in mente, non viene manipolata né cade in tutte quelle altre brutte dinamiche (anche perché, per lei, è più che altro un giochino sessuale: non prova sentimenti per lui). La fertility talk è buttata lì solo come battuta (ma l’ho comunque taggata perché #nonsisamai). Per il resto, se la leggi come una situationship, non ti fai male 😽😽😽😽 le cose zozze son molto zozze quindiiiiiiii hehehehehehehehwhwhej *si sfrega le mani*
